


No Wands at the Wedding

by startwearingpurple



Series: Rose Weasley: Bounty Hunter [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All the Weasleys - Freeform, F/M, Harry Potter Next Generation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwearingpurple/pseuds/startwearingpurple
Summary: The (second) wedding of Dominique Weasley is approaching. While the Bridezilla conducts her reign of terror over her family, her cousins stage various rebellions and revenges as best they can (without their parents catching them).Finding love in time for Dominique's wedding seemed unlikely. Hugo would have to settle for selecting a date that would offend her in some way, and after the wedding he'd start looking for his soul mate.





	1. Take Your Places

_Mr. and Mrs. William Arthur Weasley request the pleasure of your company on the occasion of the marriage of their daughter Dominique Apolline with Baron Reinolt Greville Hendrik Van Laren at Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam on Saturday, June 10th at 2p.m._

_Please RSVP via owl at your earliest convenience_

_And please, no wands at the wedding_

“Contract your deltoids- these muscles-” Hugo Weasley poked at his patient’s back to demonstrate “-while you raise the dumbbell. Like so.” He guided the path up to maximum height and then sat on the floor to watch while the patient completed the exercise. Hugo ran a hand through his close-cropped red curls as he settled on the purple carpet. It had been a long day, and his acid green Healer's robes felt rather as if they were melting onto his body, he'd been wearing them that long.

“Did you get your invitation from Dominique yet?” His cousin Molly, sitting beside him on the floor, rolled her eyes theatrically. Molly had recently shaved her dreadlocks off, and the bare growth of red stubble emphasized her blue eyes, especially when she rolled them like that. “She slipped in a note telling me to make my hair normal again. And there was actual gilt on that bloody invitation. Real gold. Honestly, I’m only surprised it took her this long to use it. Probably it'll be on all her Christmas cards now.”

“Well, she’s marrying a title. I'm sure appearances have to be kept and all that rot. And Dominique turning bridezilla shouldn't come as a surprise. She's been a bridezilla since she was twelve.” Hugo kept his eyes on his patient. “If you can take it a bit higher-”

A low groan sounded. “Kiss my arse, Hugo.”

“He’s very rich, according to Roxanne,” Molly said to Hugo, then added encouragingly, “You’re doing very well, you know.”

This was greeted by a profane mumbling that made her grin. Hugo didn’t comment about Dominique’s impending leap to extreme wealth, instead watching his patient closely. This particular patient had been one of his more difficult cases, with each gain hard-won through gritted teeth and determination and a strong resolve not to punch anyone in the jaw, and that was just on Hugo's part.

“Two more. Good. And on this final raise, let’s hold the contraction and try to raise up just another inch-”

The patient grunted, and the dumbbell went up half an inch higher. Molly and Hugo cheered in unison. The dumbbell hit the floor, and Riordan Fitzroy rolled onto his back and gave them the finger.

“You’re both goddamn sadists,” he told them, and began to rub his shoulder. “Are we done? This is worse than spell treatment.”

Molly sat up onto her knees and leaned forward to kiss him. “Well done.”

“You should be very proud of your progress,” Hugo added.

“Bugger off. Which one is Dominique?” Fitz asked.

“Long reddish-blonde hair, big blue eyes, smiles like she wants to eat your soul,” Molly told him.

“Oh, that one.” Fitz didn’t offer an opinion about their cousin, but since most people either completely fawned over or didn’t much care for Dominique, Hugo took this to mean he didn’t like her. With Dominique, it was always one or the other: few people were neutral about her. They loved her or hated her. Except her cousins, who managed both simultaneously.

Of course because she was his cousin, Hugo dutifully loved her. And avoided her whenever possible.  
“Any chance of ditching her wedding?” he asked wistfully.

Molly gave him a look. “Hugo, you know what Aunt Hermione would say.”

Hugo contemplated his mother’s likely reaction if he didn’t turn up at Dominique’s second wedding and pulled a face. She would kill him, then revive him so she could kill him again. “It’s not fair. I went to the first one. I was well-behaved. Why am I being punished?”

“Is she likely to have hot friends as her bridesmaids?” Fitz asked.

“Instead of her cousins? Of course.” Molly grinned at him. “Want to be my date? I’ll let you ogle the bridesmaids if you let me ogle the groomsmen.”

“Deal,” Fitz said, and leaned over to kiss her. “Where is this wedding?”

“Amsterdam. She’s marrying a baron in some bloody gigantic church.”

“A Dutch baron. That sounds about par for the course for her. I’ve never been to Amsterdam,” Fitz said thoughtfully. “I heard you can buy powdered dragon claw in the supermarkets there.”

“You can buy all sorts of stuff there,” said Hugo, who had been to Amsterdam several years back. “All kinds of illegal substances. And as your primary care Healer, I cannot recommend that you ingest, inhale, or otherwise use substances not approved by the Ministry of Magic. But as your girlfriend’s cousin, I’ll give you a list of recreational stuff the League doesn’t test for.”

“The League doesn’t test coaches,” Fitz pointed out.

“Oh, so you think you’ll be going around smoking things without me?” Molly winked at him. “Hugo, you have to come to the wedding. It’ll be miserable if we’re not all there. Roxanne says Fred is going, and where Fred goes, James goes, and if James is going, Albus will go.”

“It’s like a domino effect for Weasleys,” Fitz quipped.

Molly rolled her eyes at him. “My point is, you’ll miss out on the craziness if you’re not there. Besides, Louis will be there too. Dominique can’t avoid inviting him, he’s her baby brother. Someone has to be able to revive him when he inevitably overdoses on powdered whatever because some witch talked him into it.”

Hugo groaned. This was entirely true. His cousin Louis had infamously bad taste in women and an incredible ability to attract them in droves. He’d been arrested any number of times, hexed, stuffed in a car boot, thrown into a river, and on one memorable occasion, shot in the arse by a Muggle husband while climbing out a bedroom window. Louis, of course, claimed he hadn’t known the woman was married, and that he’d been in love. Louis was always in love. Louis was perfectly capable of falling in love within five minutes of meeting a woman.

“He _would_ overdose, wouldn’t he,” Hugo said glumly. “That’d be right up his alley.”

“It’s only a matter of time. You should be on hand just in case. You’re the only one with real medical training.”

“Your cousin Louis makes for a good cautionary tale,” Fitz remarked. “We ought to do a training film about him for the Beaters. I’d call it 'The Benefits of Sobriety'.”

“Good luck getting that lot to stop drinking,” said Molly. “They're professionals.”

“Professional athletes or professional drunks?”

“Isn't that the same thing?”

“What about that note at the end?” Hugo put in, attempting to return to the original topic. “No wands at the wedding.”

“That’s likely,” Molly retorted. “Imagine telling Uncle Harry he can’t bring his wand anywhere he likes.”

The thing was, Dominique had the balls to do exactly that. Hugo was fairly sure what his father would do – sneak his wand in anyway – and wasn’t even so sure his mother would abide by that rule. Uncle Harry, of course, would bring his anyway and not give a damn what anyone said.

“Will you leave your wand at home?” Fitz asked, aiming this question at his girlfriend.

Molly made a _tchah!_ sound. “Absolutely not. I'm bringing it along. I'll leave it in the hotel room or something for the actual ceremony so Dommie can be happy. And you leave yours as well.”

“What about the powdered dragon claw? Do we have to leave that in the hotel room?”

Hugo left them to it after that. Molly was one of his favorite cousins, but Hugo didn't want to know if she was planning to violate any Quidditch League rules while she was in Amsterdam. As one of the League's Healers, he had a duty to report such things. Fortunately, Molly was unlikely to actually misbehave. She had, after all, been Head Girl in her day. She was more likely to play designated Apparator while Fitz smoked mysterious plants and drank dodgy potions, and steer him away from the addictive items.

Molly was a rule-abider. Hugo did his best to be one as well. He'd had his moments in Hogwarts, but he was an adult now, despite his best efforts to the contrary, and an authority figure as a Healer.

Besides, he was the good child.

His flat was quiet when he unlocked the door, sweeping his wand across the locks and listening to them click and clatter open. No one waited for him behind the locked door, only an empty flat with an assemblage of comfortable but unfashionable furniture. Several paintings by his sister's boyfriend were the only décor on the walls. A book on the coffee table contained an assortment of family photos, because while he was a bachelor, he was still a Weasley.

And family was important.

Groaning, Hugo flopped down onto the red plaid sofa. He was going to have to be a responsible grown-up as usual, a dutiful family member, and go to the damn wedding, whether he wanted to or not.

*

Lily Potter hurried up the garden path to her grandmother's house, picking her way through the puddles from the afternoon rain. Her bright pink dragonskin boots almost glowed in their reflections on the wet flagstones as she dodged the puddles. Lily pushed her cat's eye glasses back into place. They always slid down her nose, but she didn't care.

Travails of being the fashionista in the family.

There was no need to knock. Lily went in through the kitchen door and brushed some raindrops off her purple houndstooth coat. Her parents were sitting at the table, drinking tea and laughing with her uncle Ron. Aunt Hermione sat beside them at the head of the table, a mug of tea forgotten in front of her while she pored over a large stack of parchment.

They greeted her with smiles and invitations for tea, except Aunt Hermione, who did not appear to have noticed her arrival.

Ginny Potter slid a mug in front of her daughter and reached for the teapot. “I didn't know you were coming by, dear.”

Lily had been bored at home, with no one to talk to, but she didn't want to admit that to her mother. It would only result in more parental check-ins than she already received. “Thought I'd check in on you, but you weren't at home.”

Her father smiled at her, eyes twinkling. “Good of you to keep tabs on your aging parents.”

Lily rolled her eyes and sat down. “What's that Aunt Hermione's looking at?” she asked as she wrapped her hands around the deliciously warm mug of tea.

“Dominique's pre-nup,” Uncle Ron told her, giving the pile of parchment in front of his wife a sidelong glance. “Can't believe she's actually going to sign that bloody thing.”

“Not until Hermione's been through it with a fine-tooth comb,” Harry said smugly.

“Your uncle Bill asked if she'd mind,” Ginny added, directing her comment at Lily.

Aunt Hermione blinked and looked up suddenly. “Hand me that notepad, Ron.”

He grabbed a small notepad from beside the teapot and handed it over.

“I just thought of a few more clauses for Dominique's protection to add. They've got the usual stuff about how much for sons and daughters and all that, infidelity, sterility, et cetera, but I don't see anything about indictments or criminal activity. Better make sure something is included for that.”

Lily tried unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. “Considering how her first husband turned out...”

“Lily,” her mother said severely.

“Well, she's not wrong,” chuckled Uncle Ron.

Dominique's first husband had been arrested in a corruption scandal with a woman later arrested for international crimes ranging from illegal weapons trade to murder. Lily winked at Uncle Ron and took her mug off to the parlor to see if her grandparents were around.

Dominique herself was in the parlor, in an expensive-looking tea gown, a confection of silk chiffon in a pale aqua that flattered Dominique's red-gold hair and pale complexion. Lily recognized the design from Paris Fashion Week and tried not to hate her cousin a bit because she owned that dress and Lily didn't. Dominique was pacing around in her gold leather heels, tossing off wedding reception instructions to a Quick-Quotes Quill floating in the air near her. The quill matched her dress. Lily sighed.

Dominique's much less intimidating older sister was sitting on a sofa nearby, wearing a battered set of burgundy robes that set off her flaming-red curls in an interesting, if probably unintended, way. Victoire Lupin hoisted herself from the couch and came over to give Lily a hug. “Didn't know you'd be here. Don't mind the bride-to-be, she's in planning mode.”

Lily patted Victoire's shoulder a bit awkwardly until her cousin let go. Victoire was pregnant, again, and when she hugged you, the hard mound of baby bump pressed rather uncomfortably. “Just popping by. Is Gran about?”

“Upstairs having a nap.” Victoire winked conspiratorially, then added in a whisper, “Dommie was giving her a headache.”

“Good morning, Lily,” Dominique said, drawing their attention. Dominique's articulation was picture-perfect, like a Muggle newscaster. Her vowels were rounded perfectly, her consonants flawlessly enunciated.

Dominique was exhausting.

“Oi,” Lily returned, giving her cousin a determined smile. “Where's the little one?”

“At Victoire's, playing with Dora.”

Victoire pursed her lips. Lily assumed this meant Dora Lupin was terrorizing Thornton Campbell in some way, and resolved once again not to visit Victoire unless she was sure all of Victoire's children were asleep. All the Lupin children were proper terrors, and Dora in particular was a tiny tyrant dressed perpetually in pink tutus, a sparkly pink toy wand clutched determinedly in one fist, rather like a truncheon.

“I haven't received RSVPs from everyone yet,” Dominique remarked, obviously eager to get the focus back on her wedding. She'd been the same way the first time she'd got married, Lily reflected.

“I'm sure everyone is coming,” Victoire said soothingly. Her sister did not look soothed, and fired off a few more instructions for the wedding dinner to the Quick-Quotes Quill while Victoire returned to her seat on the sofa. Lily sat down beside her, glad for Victoire's presence. As the eldest of the Weasley grandchildren, she had been their leader by both default and inclination for as long as Lily could remember. Victoire was a mother hen.

“Albus wasn't going to come,” Lily told her under her breath. “Mum told him he had to.”

“Teddy doesn't want to go either,” Victoire whispered. “He was hoping to use the pregnancy and the children as an excuse. Unfortunately, Dominique arranged a sitter for the children during the ceremony.”

“Lily, who are you bringing?” Dominique asked then, interrupting their muffled conversation. “I can set you up with someone appropriate so you don't have to be alone.”

Lily bristled. “I don't need a fix-up, Dommie.”

“I'm just looking out for you. I know what a hard time you have finding a boyfriend. Especially one who's appropriate to bring to a family wedding. Oh,” Dominique added in a different tone, turning to her sister, “and did we get an RSVP from Hilarion yet?”

“Lucy and her husband are coming, yes.” Victoire was starting to look rather annoyed.

Lily glared at Dominique as she paced in those gold heels and that silk dress, and fingered her wand. One little hex, no one but Victoire would know...

Instead she picked up the book of wedding plans lying on the table instead and paged through it. Dominique was a snob, but she was a snob with excellent taste and an extensive budget, thanks to her affianced husband. Everything in the book was tasteful and elegant. Lily sighed inwardly. There were four pages of options for bridesmaid dresses, each more beautiful than the last.

“Aren't those lovely?” Victoire asked, seeing Lily stop on one of the pages featuring a cobalt blue gown shot with gold threads ending in starbursts on the skirts.

“Gorgeous,” Lily said enviously.

“They're going to look beautiful on my bridesmaids,” Dominique said with satisfaction, peering down at the image of the dress. “All six of them have blonde hair almost the exact shade of gold on that embroidery, it's going to be gorgeous in the photos.”

Though she'd guessed she wasn't serving as bridesmaid since Dominique had failed to mention it until now, it still stung a bit not to be asked. Lily pursed her lips and tried not to think about how well she wore cobalt blue. “I'm sure they'll be wonderful.”

“I selected the bridesmaids very specifically. I wanted a matched set – oh, look here, see the shoes I've chosen for them-” Dominique flipped a page, and behind her Lily saw Victoire pulling a face.

She tried not to laugh. “The shoes are gorgeous too, Dommie.”

“Everything will be so coordinated. Obviously I couldn't have you lot, I mean Victoire will be nearly to term so she can't stand up for me, and Molly, well, have you seen her hair lately?” Dominique rolled her eyes theatrically. “I mean, really.”

“You know Molly would happily regrow her hair and style it however you liked if you only asked her to,” Victoire said steadily. She did not look pleased with her sister.

“I just want everything to be perfect so we can have the best start possible.” Dominique flipped another page and showed Lily a photo of an elegant and antique-styled sapphire and gold parure. “I'll be wearing this. It belongs to Reinolt's mother, the dowager baroness. I planned the bridesmaid colours around it.”

There was even a tiara in the parure. Lily had to make an effort not to hate her cousin a little bit.

“I don't see why you couldn't have your cousins as your bridesmaids, even if you don't want my fat pregnant belly up there beside you.” Victoire was eyeing her sister again. “If you wanted matching hair, you'd have it. And gingers look lovely in that shade of blue.”

“It's one of my best colours,” Lily murmured, grateful that Victoire was willing to stand up to her sister.

Dominique sniffed. “I just can't be sure of everyone's good behavior. Obviously Lucy would act like a lady, but, well, she wouldn't fit the dress. Lily, I'm sure you could learn-”

Lily gave her a look, and Dominique went on as if she had no idea what she was saying was rude.

“-and Molly could probably manage it if she would only put her hair right and take out some piercings, but she's got that tattoo all over her back and the dresses are strapless. Then Rose, well, obviously I couldn't ask her. I couldn't even invite her without making sure there was a sitter for all the children.”

“Rose knows better than to bring her son to a wedding,” Victoire said evenly.

“You brought Johnny to Lucy's wedding, and look what happened,” her sister reminded her.

Lily pictured the tidal wave of spilled punch soaking half the guests at Lucy's wedding thanks to Johnny Lupin, and wondered if she could bribe Teddy into setting his son loose at Dominique's wedding as well.

Victoire's ginger eyebrows drew together. “Lucy said I could bring the children. And most of those stains came out-”

“Well, you're actually a good mother, though, and look what happened anyway. If that's what can be expected-”

Victoire scowled. “What are you saying, Dommie?”

“I'm only saying, if _you_ couldn't manage to adequately watch your children at a wedding, of course Rose isn't going to be able to.” Dominique rolled her perfectly mascaraed eyes theatrically. “I mean, honestly. She's not a very good mother, is she?”

Lily's eyes were wide with horror that she was actually related Dominique, and then a noise behind them made all three women turn toward the front door.

Rose Weasley was standing in the doorway. From her expression, it was clear she'd overheard everything. Standing behind her was her boyfriend, Scorpius Malfoy, holding their son in his arms and wearing an expression of deep loathing as he regarded Dominique.

“Rose-” Victoire exclaimed, struggling to get up from her chair.

Rose turned on her heel, snatched her son out of Scorpius's arms, and stalked off through the parlor. Scorpius looked at Dominique as if he'd like to hex her, but he turned and followed Rose without a word. Lily could hear Rose stomping up the stairs and the faint murmur of Scorpius's voice.

“Dominique,” Victoire said sharply. “You should go and apologize at once.”

Dominique affected an expression of hurt. “I'm only being honest. It's a real concern for me as the bride.”

Lily mimed throwing up, then slid out of her chair and left. Maybe not being invited to the bridal party was best; at least this way, her involvement with Dominique was limited to attending the wedding and maybe wishing her well at the reception.

Or wishing her something at the reception, anyway. Well might be too strong a word.

In the kitchen, Lily's mother looked up when she came in and took in Lily's expression. “Oh dear,” she said. “What happened?”

“Dominique, eh?” asked her father rhetorically.

Rose came storming through then, her son still clutched in her arms and Scorpius trailing behind her. Uncle Ron moved to stand up, but Rose was out the door before he could get to his feet. Scorpius flashed an apologetic smile over his shoulder as he jogged after his girlfriend.

“What happened?” Ginny repeated warily.

Lily relayed what Dominique had said about Rose, and Ginny and Aunt Hermione exchanged a glance. Harry didn't look surprised. None of them did, really. Dominique being a bit of a bitch was not really news in the Weasley family.

Uncle Ron rubbed a hand over his face. “Reckon we ought to talk to Bill?” he asked his wife.

“They're not children. We don't need to go tattle to her father, even if he is your brother. Rose will deal with Dominique in her own way,” Aunt Hermione said wisely.

Lily and her mother snorted in unison.

“Oh, I'll just bet,” Lily chuckled. “Dommie's lucky she didn't get hexed.”

Victoire stuck her head in the room. “Did Rose leave?”

“Yes.” Uncle Ron eyed her. “Your sister-”

“I know, Uncle Ron.” Victoire disappeared back into the parlor.

Uncle Ron huffed over this and stuffed a biscuit in his mouth, mumbling about Dominique under his breath. Aunt Hermione rolled her eyes at him and went back to scribbling notes on Dominique's pre-nup.

“Staying for dinner?” Ginny asked.

Dominique didn't seem to be going anywhere, so Lily decided she was. “No, I'll pass. I just wanted to check in on you lot, make sure no one's gone senile yet.”

“I'm going to start wearing my underpants on my head just to see what you do,” her father informed her gravely.

“I'll put you in a very nice facility, Dad,” Lily assured him.

Her dad grinned widely at her. “I knew I could count on my only daughter to take care of me in my dotage.”


	2. Likely To Offend

Hugo was sitting at his kitchen table after work one evening, wolfing down leftover curry, when someone banged on his door. Before he could do more than stand, the door opened and in sailed his sister, Rose.

“Oi,” she said, taking in the bowl in his hand. “Oh good, you're not busy. I need your help.”

Hugo managed to swallow the piping-hot curry in his mouth. “With what? Have you got something planned for Dommie as revenge?”

His sister scowled deeply, her red brows drawn together in a sharp line. “Heard about what she said about me, did you?”

Lily had Flooed him yesterday to tell him everything, and right behind her had been his cousin Roxanne, who'd been annoyed that Lily had beaten her to the gossip punch when she'd discovered that Hugo already knew the whole story. Roxanne hated to be scooped, especially by a cousin.

“Well, Dommie can go suck a knarl quill, I don't care what she says about me,” Rose went on, though from the look on her face, she cared more than she would like to admit.

Hugo smiled a bit at this. “Well, as your brother, I'd be happy to help you defend your honor. So if you need any help seeking vengeance, let me know.”

Rose's lips curved in a smile that was equal parts satisfaction and pure malice. “Oh, I've got that covered, don't you worry.”

He gave his sister a look, remembering many a scuffle with his sister during their childhood. “Don't _hurt_ her, Rose.”

Rose puffed up in mock outrage. “I would never _hurt_ her. I mean, she certainly deserves a good sock to the eye, it would do her a load of good really, bit of a public service to be honest, but I wouldn't do it. I'm her cousin. I love her. Besides, Dad said she'd probably file charges.”

Hugo didn't need to think this over to know their dad had a point. That sounded right up Dominique's obnoxious alley. “Well, as long as you don't actually sock her in the eye-”

“I thought of something much, much better than that,” she assured him. “But that's not why I'm here.”

“Why _are_ you here?” he asked, feeling a bit bewildered. This was not an unusual feeling when Rose was around. He wondered if he could bolt down a few more bites of curry before she got to the point.

“I was picking up a skip this afternoon and he got me pretty good, and-”

Hugo shot to his feet, the half-eaten curry forgotten now. “Why didn't you say so? Where are you hurt? What spell did you get hit with?”

She turned, pulling up her shirt to display a large gash stretching from her shoulder halfway down her back. The skin around it was dirty, already beginning to bruise. “Well, he was trying to hide up a tree, you see, and one thing led to another, and when we fell out of the tree we landed on some ornamental brickwork-”

Shaking his head, Hugo examined the wound. The healing spells he could try were already spinning through his mind's eye. “Only you, Rose. Hang on a tick, let me get my wand.”

An hour later his sister was healed, the blood cleaned from her favorite pink unicorn t-shirt, and on her way back home. Hugo sat back down to his curry, now gone stone-cold, and stared around his empty flat. It seemed even quieter and more empty than usual now that Rose had gone. Rose swept along through life in a cloud of chaos, getting into and out of scrapes that would have knocked out even one of their dad's highly-trained underlings in the Auror Department.

It was not his first time healing his sister after a work-related injury. Rose liked to come see him rather than going to St. Mungo's, since any injuries healed there were likely to be relayed to one or both of their parents in short order – both their parents having networks of spies everywhere, which they both liked to think of as “contacts” or friends – whereas injuries healed by Hugo were not likely to see the light of day, since Hugo didn't generally tattle on his sister.

Partly this was because he felt they were too old for that type of thing, and partly this was because it would lead to their mother asking him constantly what his sister was up to.

He preferred to avoid those sorts of questions. Plausible deniability was key with Rose.

He thought back to what she'd said about vengeance against Dominique. Probably the whole family knew by now, thanks to Lily and Roxanne, what Dominique had said about Rose's mothering skills. It had been a low blow even for Dominique. Sure, Rose let her boyfriend do most of the child-rearing, because he had more of the caregiver type of personality than she did, but she was a fine mother. She certainly loved little Ramses to distraction.

Dominique really was deeply unpleasant, Hugo reflected. He didn't know what his sister had up her sleeve for revenge, but there was no reason he couldn't help out a bit. She might have it covered, but he could get one in for their side as well. She was his sister, after all.

He didn't have a girlfriend at the moment. He'd had a half-formed notion of going stag and trying to pick up a bridesmaid, but he was beginning to think that sort of thing was beneath his dignity as a Healer. Besides, with his cousin Louis present and on the prowl, none of the bridesmaids would give him a second glance.

And an additional and newly discovered besides: he found that he didn't much care for the thought of another girl who would last a fortnight and be gone, the way his relationships normally did. It had been years since he'd dated a girl longer than a month at a go.

Lately he'd been spending a lot of time around his cousin Molly, since he'd begun working for the Quidditch League as a Healer, and since she'd started seeing her coach. The chronic pain Riordan Fitzroy lived with after his injury meant he needed regular visits with a Healer. He and Hugo had fallen into a rapport when Hugo had started researching Muggle remedies to help him get on with life without full use of his arm, and since then Hugo had been privy to the full force of Molly and Fitz as a couple.

They really were a team together. Hugo had known it was a goal he ought to have, having seen up close and personal the happy marriages of his parents and aunts and uncles, even seeing it in his mad sister and her equally mad boyfriend, but somehow watching it on a near-daily basis with his extremely sane and put-together cousin had brought it home, crystallizing the realization. Molly and Fitz were his peers, not his parents' generation, and not his crazy sister. They were a team. And Hugo wanted what they had together.

He wanted someone to cheer him on when he overcame challenges, someone he could relax around and have a laugh with, someone to hold in the long nights. Someone to love, and to love him back.

Hugo looked round his empty flat. He didn't want to be alone.

Finding love in time for Dominique's wedding seemed unlikely, though. He'd have to settle for selecting a date that would offend her in some way, to get a dig in on behalf of his sister, and after the wedding he'd start looking for his soul mate.

And if offending Dominique was the only criteria needed, he knew just the person.

*

“What do you mean, you already have a date?” Lily scowled at her brother and gave him a shove. “No you don't. You never have a date.”

“I do this time.” Albus adjusted his glasses and gave her a frown. “Don't shove me. What are you, twelve?”

“Who's your date?” Lily demanded, ignoring this. “Anyone I know? Is this a girl date or a boy date?”

“It's no one you know, and you'll find out at the wedding.” Albus knocked back his shot. “Now drink up, you're falling behind, you nosy niffler.”

Lily pursed her lips at him for a moment and then picked up her own shot, downing the firewhisky in one swallow.

She'd counted on her perpetually single brother to help her out. They would keep each other company and mock Dominique behind her back. Albus was great fun that way, and unlike her single cousins, he wouldn't run off with a bridesmaid and leave her hanging at the reception.

“I can't be the _only one_ without a date. What about Hugo?”

Albus shook his head. “He told me he's taking a coworker.”

“James has a girlfriend. Molly and Rose have boyfriends. Lucy and Roxanne and Victoire are all married. Everyone has a date.”

“Louis will be stag,” her brother pointed out.

Lily waved a hand, still holding the empty shot glass, in dismissal. “Louis is a whore. He'll have three horrible women by the time the night is over, and then we'll be picking him up from the nearest law enforcement officers.”

Her brother didn't dispute the truth of this. Instead he said optimistically, “Well, there's always Fred.”

Lily put her head on the bartop. This was an error, as it felt sticky and was probably contagious. She sat back up, wiping her forehead with a napkin. “I've reached the pinnacle of patheticness, haven't I. I'm on the same level as Fred.”

Albus's lips quirked in a small smile at this. “Fred's not so bad.”

Lily rolled her eyes dramatically. “Albus, go with me. You don't really have a date, do you?”

He patted her on the shoulder. “I'm sorry, Lily, but I really do have a date.”

Her brother trotted off to the restroom, and Lily slumped onto the bartop. She had truly counted on Albus as her companion in spinsterhood, so to speak. Albus never dated. As far as she could recall, Albus had had little to no interest in either gender. He simply didn't seem set up that way. Normally he would attend events like this proudly solo, and she had thought to do the same. Well, with him anyway.

But Albus had a _date_. Everyone had dates. Except Louis, but he hardly counted. And as she'd said, he'd have three dates before the night was up. Louis could always be counted on for _that_.

She could find a date, sure, but one she could bring on a family wedding out of town? Not on a moment's notice. She didn't even have any single male friends she could bring.

Lord, everyone was half of a pair except her.

The bartender swept past, refilling the two shot glasses in front of her without needing to be asked. No doubt she looked like she needed another drink. Albus was back a moment later, and picked up his glass.

“This is intolerable,” Lily remarked.

“Keep drinking, you'll feel better.” Her brother handed her the other shot.

The next day was even more intolerable, when she had to contemplate being alone at the wedding when even _Albus_ had a bloody date, and she had a roaring hangover to complicate her contemplation. Lily laid on the floor of her living room, which was as far as she'd managed to get since getting out of bed, and stared at the ceiling.

Everyone had a date. Most of them were permanent dates, too, long-term relationships and marriages. Built-in dates. One didn't even have to ask.

Oh, it was so unfair. Lily hadn't had a permanent date in over two years, not since she'd broken things off with the drummer fellow she'd met through Roxanne's husband. All of her dates since then had been decidedly temporary.

And now she was going to go stag to Dominique's wedding and have to listen to Dommie clucking over how sad it was that Lily couldn't find a man, how Lily hadn't managed to get a proper date. It would be humiliating, especially coming from Dominique. And the worst thing was, because it would be Dominique's wedding, she wouldn't be allowed to make any jabs back at her cousin. Reminding Dommie of her first husband usually knocked her down a peg.

Normally Lily didn't use that sort of low blow against Dominique. But damn it, her cousin would try the patience of a saint.

Lily had never claimed to be a saint.

She dragged herself to her feet, moaning a bit. She managed to get dressed and slap on some makeup, hoping it looked like that Japanese trend of hangover makeup rather than an actual hangover, and then was out the door, hiding behind oversized Jackie O sunglasses.

When she arrived at her uncle's joke shop, her cousin Fred was sitting on the counter, cross-legged in his magenta shop robes. He waved and tossed aside the book he'd been reading when he saw her.

“All right there, Lily? You look terrible, were you drinking last night?”

She rolled her eyes, but because she was still wearing the dark sunglasses, he probably couldn't see this. “Is it obvious?”

“Well, I know you very well,” Fred said diplomatically. “But yes. Did you hear what Dominique said about Rose?”

“Yeah, I was there.” Lily slid onto the counter beside him and took off her sunglasses. “How'd you hear about it?”

“Roxanne.”

His sister was a reporter, and while she never wrote anything bad about her family, she was certainly quick to spread the gossip to all their relatives, Lily thought with a sniff, ignoring the fact she'd been spreading it around herself.

Fred squinted at her. “Your eyes are the same red as your lipstick. Did you do that on purpose?”

“Do you have a date for the wedding?” Lily asked him, bald-faced.

“Yeah, I'm taking this girl I know- what?” he interrupted his own train of thought when Lily flung herself dramatically against him.

“Everyone has a date except me, Freddie. When did I become such a loser? I should have started finding a boyfriend months ago so I wouldn't have to go alone.”

“Just take any old person,” Fred suggested. “It's only Dominique's. She's bound to have another one, and you can bring someone special then.”

“I can't take just anyone, it's an out-of-town wedding. Any bloke I ask will get the wrong idea. Besides, have you any idea how my parents will act? How my brothers will act?”

Fred nodded then, understanding dawning. “Oh, yeah, I didn't think of that.”

“This is awful.” Lily rubbed her hands over her eyes, remembered she'd put on eyeliner, and groaned. “I'm a mess, Fred. Kill me now. Put me out of my misery.”

“I don't know why you're so bothered,” he said obliviously. “Just go alone.”

“Dominique will get snippy and make a remark about how I couldn't get a date.”

“Who cares?”

As much as Lily hated to admit it, she cared. She didn't want to go alone to the wedding. She didn't want to be the only one there without a date. Maybe she should just take any old person. Maybe Fred was right. That seemed to be working for the boys.

“Want me to set you up, then?” Fred asked. “I've got a friend who might do for you.”

It was a mark of Lily's increasing desperation to not look like a loser that she didn't laugh at this. Fred's friends were James's friends, and she knew exactly the type of blokes her brother was friends with.

Still… Anyone was better than no one at this point, and at least if she had a set-up, she'd know the man wasn't secretly an axe murderer. Fred and James's friends would at least be a laugh. And in all likelihood, the sort of blokes Fred and James were friends with were also likely to offend Dominique.

If she couldn't suddenly produce a soul mate to parade around in front of Dominique and wave their great love under her perfect nose, then Lily could at least find someone obnoxious to let loose on the proceedings.

“Yeah, go ahead.”


	3. Rude Boys

Hugo steeled himself, drawing a deep breath, as he stood in front of the yellow-painted door. It was a dreadful shade of yellow, almost green and almost brown but neither one. The paint was chipped right underneath the doorknocker. He did not really want to be outside this particular door, since he knew who was behind it and that she was likely to be home at this hour, but that was why he'd come, after all. That didn't mean he was looking forward to this.

“Oh, just get it over with,” he muttered to himself, and reached up to bang on the door.

A few moments later, it popped open an inch and a familiar-looking beady brown eye appeared in the crack.

“What d'you want, then?”

Hugo smiled gamely and waved. “Hi Gwen.”

The door didn't budge. “I hate being called that. What d'you want, Weasley?”

“I wanted to ask if you'd like to come to my cousin's wedding with me, Gwyneira.”

The door closed sharply, and the sound of several locks sliding open could be heard. Hugo wished there was time to bang his head against a wall, but of course there wasn't. A moment later, the door opened fully and his least-favorite coworker, Gwyneira Griffiths, appeared, dressed in ratty purple robes with yellow trim nearly the same shade as the horrible paint on her front door. She looked utterly gobsmacked. It was not really a good look on her, but it made a nice change from her usual scowl of general disapproval of the world and everything in it.

“What the bloody hell for?” she demanded. “I don't even like you. Why would I want to go to a wedding with you? Why would you want to go to a wedding with me, for that matter? You don't like me either.”

Hugo had already considered these questions and had his answer ready. “You should go with me cause you'll get a free weekend in Amsterdam. And I want to bring you because you're sure to piss off my cousin who's getting married.”

Gwyneira blinked. “You _want_ to piss her off?”

“Yes,” Hugo said decisively.

“Oh. Well, in that case, I'll come along. Do I have to be on my best behavior?” She didn't look as if she had any desire to be on her best behavior. He wasn't sure she actually had any best behavior, for that matter. He'd certainly never seen any evidence of it.

Gwyneira had been in front of their supervisor any number of times for being nasty to patients. Even when she wasn't intentionally being mean, nobody liked her and she clearly didn't like them. Being offensive in general seemed to come naturally to her. Hugo honestly had no idea why she wanted to work in Healing to begin with, since she always seemed to be wishing death on everyone she met. She seemed entirely aware that she was unpleasant and unlikable and lacked any desire to stop being that way.

“Definitely not. The worse, the better.”

She considered him. “Can I wear what I like? Do I have to be nice to you?”

“Yes, and no. So do you want to come?”

“Okay,” she said slowly, still looking suspicious. “I suppose I wouldn't mind going to Amsterdam.”

“It's in a fortnight. I'll owl you the details,” Hugo told her. “See you at the game this weeken-”

The door was already closing in his face.

Hugo rocked back on his heels. That had been rather less painful than he'd expected. Gwen Griffiths was sure to annoy Dominique within minutes, and he could pat himself on the back for being a good brother and getting one in for Rose.

Victory.

Whistling cheerfully, Hugo trotted off to the pub to meet his cousins.

James and Fred had taken over a table that was conspicuously located in the middle of the room and were loudly discussing women and Fred's need for a pretty one, because neither one of them would spot subtlety if it bit them on the arse. Fred was scanning the room eagerly, surveying the available prey for the evening. James, now an engaged man, was looking round as well but with rather less interest than Fred.

“What about her?” he asked, pointing at a blonde witch at the bar.

Fred craned his neck for a better look. “She seems all right.”

“I thought you already had a date for Dominique's wedding?” Hugo asked as he sat down at their table.

James took a sip of his beer and gestured with the mug at the room in general. “He does. What he doesn't have is a date for tonight.”

“Ah.” Hugo noted the extra seat at the table. “Is Albus joining us, or is that in case Fred finds a date?”

“Albus is here. Somewhere. Getting a drink or having a piss, who knows.” Fred's attention drew back to his cousin. “You have a date for the wedding, Hugo?”

“Yep,” he said, satisfied. “Remember my co-worker that said she'd cut off your hand if you touched her?”

They both goggled at him.

“Why the hell are you bringing _her_?” James demanded.

“Because of what Dommie said about Rose.”

“Oh, that.” Fred dismissed this with a wave. “If we all got upset about every horrible thing Dominique said, nobody would get anything done.”

“Yeah, but you know Rose. She won't just let it go. I'm only being a good brother. Defending her honor and all that.” He absolutely did not want to tell them about his earlier epiphany about being sick of simply finding the next Ms. Right Now. Despite being in love himself, James was still encouraging his single cousins to play the field, just as he always had.

“You're wasting a perfectly good opportunity to get laid,” James said sternly, true to form. “You want to bring someone hot, or go stag and pick up a bridesmaid. Women love weddings, makes them all soft and gooey. It's a sure bet.”

“Who are you bringing, then?” Hugo asked Fred, ignoring James.

“Rosina Ogden,” Fred said promptly. “She works down the street from Dad's shop, at that posh dress shop.”

Hugo nodded. “Right. And is she a sure bet?”

Fred and James both nodded. Hugo didn't ask further.

Albus turned up, pint of beer in hand, and slid into his seat. “Oi,” he said, nodding at Hugo. “Where've you been? We're two pints up on you.”

That explained rather a lot, Hugo reflected.

“He was getting his date for the wedding,” Fred advised him. “Remember his co-worker that said she'd cut off my hand?”

“Nice one, Hugo,” Albus said approvingly. “Dominique will hate her.”

“Are you bringing a date, Albus?” asked Hugo, more out of habit than actually expecting his cousin to have a date.

“Yes,” Albus said firmly.

The other three stared at him in shock. Albus looked smug and sipped his beer demurely.

“What, you?” his elder brother said incredulously.

“You're joking,” said Fred.

Albus nodded. “I have a date for the wedding.”

They stared at him again, and Albus, ignoring them with aplomb, signaled a passing waiter to order a pint of beer for Hugo. When the waiter had left again, Hugo pounced on his cousin.

“Who's your date?”

“It's a surprise,” Albus said, attempting to look mysterious.

“Do you really have a date or are you pulling our wands?” James demanded.

“I'm not pulling your wand.”

“I don't believe it,” Fred announced. “You don't really have a date. Who is it, though?”

“No one you've met,” Albus shot back.

Hugo narrowed his eyes at his cousin while Fred and James continued to rib him. To his knowledge, Albus had gone on approximately three dates in his entire life, and all of those at school. Albus simply wasn't interested. He was perfectly willing to play wingman to any cousin who needed him, whether they were picking up women or men, but he never cared to pick up anyone for himself.

“Do you really have a date?” he asked eventually, when Fred and James had shut up long enough to squeeze a word in around them.

“I really do. And I'm really not going to tell you who it is.”

“Loser,” said James.

“Twat,” said Albus.

“Tosspot.”

“Wanker.”

“I'm telling Mum.”

“I'm telling Navya.”

“Shite,” said James. “You win. Firewhisky, anyone?” He slid out of his seat and dashed over to the bar.

“I'm surprised Navya's not here, actually,” Hugo said, glancing around. “I don't think I've seen James without her attached to his side in a solid month.”

“No women allowed tonight,” Fred informed him. “Blokes only. I did ask Hob if he'd come out, cause I'm going to set him up with Lily for the wedding and I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to back out.”

Albus's black eyebrows drew together. “Wait, you're setting my sister up for the wedding?”

“Fred's doing _what_?” said James behind him, dropping several glasses of firewhisky on the table. He scowled at Fred, strongly resembling his younger brother. “Who?”

“Hob Nithercott.”

“ _Hob_?” James echoed, looking horrified. “He's a filthy bastard! He can't go near Lily! I'll gut him, the tosspot, who does he think he is-”

“Isn't Hob one of your best friends?” Hugo asked mildly.

Fred nodded. “Since we were all in second year.”

James shook a finger threateningly at him. “That's how I know he oughtn't date my sister.”

Albus was still frowning as well. “He's not wrong, Hob's got no business touching a hair on Lily's head. He's a dirty sod.”

Fred heaved a long-suffering sigh and flung himself back in his chair. “Spare me! I've got a sister too, you know, and so has Hugo, but you don't see us getting our wands in a knot just because they want to have a date-”

“Yeah well, your sister wouldn't touch one of your friends with a ten-foot pole,” Albus pointed out. “She's got more sense than Lily.”

“That's not true at all and you know it,” Fred retorted. “Well, it's true about Roxy not going anywhere near my friends, but not about her having more sense than Lily.”

“Of course she does,” Albus said. “If we ranked the girls from least to most mental, you know, on a scale from Lucy to Rose-”

“Oi,” interjected Hugo, “that's my sister you're talking about now-”

“-it would go Lucy, Victoire, Molly, Roxanne, Lily, Dominique, Rose.”

“He has a list?” Hugo asked James.

James affected surprise that Hugo didn't know this already. “He made a chart.”

Fred eyed his cousin owlishly. “I strongly disagree with the order on that list. Shouldn't Victoire be the least crazy?”

“Johnny Lupin,” chorused the Potter brothers.

“Oh.” Fred looked chagrined. “Right. I'll give you that one, then, but I think it should then go Molly, Lily, Roxanne, Dominique, then Rose.”

“Frankly, I don't think you can quantify that. Though I'd probably agree that Rose is leading the pack,” Hugo admitted, thinking of the framed picture of his sister covered in treacle that stood in a prized spot in his father's office.

“Where d'you think they'd rank us?” asked Albus.

There was silence as they contemplated this with varying degrees of horror, then Fred waved to someone in the doorway to the pub.

“Hob!” he called out loudly. “Come and join us!”

Hugo turned in his seat. He'd met Hob Nithercott before, and found him to be perfectly pleasant. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and possessing a dark sense of humour, Hob was indeed one of Fred and James's oldest school chums. He and James normally got on like a house on fire, which rather told you all you needed to know about Hob.

Today, however, James and Albus scooted their chairs closer together to make room for Hob, then leaned back and regarded him with sharp disapproval. James folded his arms across his chest.

“What's this I hear about you going out with our sister?”

Hob looked nonplussed. “Yeah, I am. What do you care?”

Albus scowled deeply, crossing his own arms now. The two of them looked extremely menacing, even to Hugo's practiced eye. Having grown up with his cousins regularly visiting, he'd been in any number of scrapes with them and knew when James and Albus teamed up, someone was bound to wind up in the hospital. The double-team against a potential suitor was a routine Hugo had seen before, especially at school. Poor Lily had hardly had any dates at all until James had left school. Most boys who'd expressed interest in her had been cornered by her brothers and threatened within an inch of their life.

Lily had, in turn, scared off quite a few girls from her brothers' paths in revenge, and there were several witches who would still cross the street to avoid bumping into one of the Potters because of Lily's stories.

“That's our baby sister,” Albus said, his voice pitched deeper with annoyance. “If you even think about injuring her feelings, you're dead.”

“Yeah, don't forget our dad is Harry Potter,” James added. “You don't lay a hand on her, got it?”

“Pretty sure that's her decision if she wants me to lay a hand on her, you Neanderthals.” Hob frowned back at them. “We've been friends for how many years now and this is the thanks I get?”

“Thanks?” Albus repeated.

“Why should we thank you?” James put in. “We ought to stuff you down the privy.”

“No wonder Lily never has a boyfriend,” Fred said _sotto voce_ to Hugo.

Hob shrugged. “Fred said Lily didn't have a date for the wedding. I agreed to go with her. Why are you acting like a couple of prats about it?”

The Potters considered him in mutual silence, then came to some sort of unspoken agreement, led as usual by James.

“Right, then,” he said, setting both hands on the tabletop. “You can take her to Dominique's wedding. But you keep your hands off her or they'll never find your body.”

“Don't think we can't do it, either,” Albus agreed.

Hob scratched the back of his neck. “Right, okay. It's just a set-up, it's not like I'm trying to elope with her.”

The scowls were immediately back across the table from him.

“Who said anything about eloping?” intoned James dangerously.

The evening did not improve from there. Eventually Fred and Hob buggered off to another pub, escaping the Potters, and Hugo went home alone, feeling grateful that his own sibling had never taken much interest in his romantic partners.

*

“Well then,” Lily said gamely, trying to hold a pleasant smile on her face. She cast about for a topic of conversation, and came up dry. The weather, that was it. There was always the weather. “Lots of rain this week, innit?”

Things were not going well.

Hob was good-looking enough, though not really her type, but he'd do. Unfortunately, it seemed she wouldn't do for him. She didn't know why, but he was a little skittish. Fred and James's friends weren't usually shy, so it was strange that Hob Nithercott was so quiet. She'd met him before, briefly, since he'd been friends with her brother for so long, and didn't remember him being this quiet. Of course, she hadn't been considering him as a potential romantic partner at the time, so maybe she hadn't noticed.

From the way this coffee date was going, it was clear he didn't consider her a potential romantic partner. They'd met in the Leaky Cauldron, as it seemed to be a decent sort of neutral ground when one wasn't sure whether one might need to drop one's date like a hot cake.

“Supposed to rain more this weekend,” Hob said. He seemed to be trying, she'd give him that.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, contemplating their coffees. Eventually Lily heaved a loud sigh and said, “Look, d'you really want to go to this wedding?”

Hob looked startled. “Dunno. Do you?”

“Of course not, but she's my cousin so I don't have a choice.”

He smiled at that, looking a little more relaxed. “You need a date, then. Just make sure your brothers don't kill me for it.”

“My brothers?” Lily frowned. “Why, what did they say to you?”

Hob shrugged. “They didn't scare me off. I'm here, aren't I?”

“Hmm.” Lily looked him over for a moment. He was here, true, but he didn't look entirely comfortable. James and Albus had probably threatened to have him drawn and quartered or something equally dramatic. Honestly, they were a complete embarrassment.

She probably should have expected it, though. They'd done that sort of thing all through school. It seemed they were never happy unless they were ruining her social life.

Hob's shaggy dark hair was hanging down over his eyes as he looked down at his coffee cup, slowly turning the cup around in his large hands. One wrist was tattooed, and Lily's eyes traced the angular design that wrapped around his tanned skin. He had nice hands, nice arms, but she wasn't really feeling a spark when she looked at him. She decided the urge to do anything naughty with him was completely lacking, which meant he wasn't going to last more than one date whether he was afraid of her brothers or not.

Well, they could go to the wedding, anyway. At least she wouldn't be alone.

“Have you actually met my cousin Dominique?” Lily asked then.

“No. I don't think so anyway. I sort of lose track of all of Fred and James's cousins, to be honest,” Hob admitted.

“Fair enough. Thanks for coming along with me. Are you the sort who hates weddings or the sort who loves weddings?”

“Hates,” he said easily. “Yourself?”

“Hates as well. They're so boring. Well, at least we can hate it together.” Lily smiled at him, and he smiled back, his eyes under the shaggy fringe sparkling.

“Yeah, we can do that. When do we leave?”

They made arrangements for the trip, and Lily made her way home. Her flat was a rather small two bedroom, but since she'd leased it purely to have the second bedroom as a wardrobe, she didn't particularly care that the second bedroom was tiny. As walk-in closets went, it was quite spacious. She kicked her shoes off in the wardrobe bedroom and sat down on the round cushioned bench in the center of the room.

She spent a few minutes looking around the room full of clothes, trying to picture what she could wear to Dominique's wedding. As usual, she was torn between the conflicting thoughts that she had nothing to wear and ought to go shopping at once, and that she had too many clothes to even know what she owned. No doubt somewhere in the depths of her closet was the perfect outfit for the occasion, if only she could find it.

Lily pursed her lips and went over to the section she mentally classified as 'Opera,' a selection of about a dozen semi-formal dresses and robes.

“Right,” she said to herself, pulling out a long purple gown and holding it up in front of herself in the mirror. “Which one best says 'Kiss my arse, I can get my own dates'?”


	4. The Bride

Lily stood in front of the steps to Dominique's rowhouse, digging in her purse for her favorite lipstick. She finally found it and turned to the small mirror she'd set hovering in the air in front of her, swiftly applying the cherry-red color. The anti-feathering charm had already worn off this particular tube, but it was such a beautiful color, she kept wearing it anyway. It was going to leave beautifully bloody marks all over Dominique's wine glasses, which also recommended it for the occasion.

She plucked the mirror out of the air and stowed it safely in her purse with the lipstick, then dashed up the brick stairs to Dominique's tastefully painted front door.

Dominique answered at once, stepping in with a welcoming smile that showed far too many teeth. If Lily hadn't grown up with her, she probably wouldn't have known that wasn't a real smile. Dominique's ability to paste on a sincere smile at the drop of a hat was legendary. Dominique had on a jaw-droppingly gorgeous floral sheath dress that fitted her like a glove. Lily would have cheerfully mugged her in a back alley for that dress.

“Good evening, Lily,” Dommie was saying, and Lily nodded.

“Where'd you find that dress, Dommie?” she asked, ignoring the pleasantries in favor of getting to the point. Not only did she want that dress for herself, it would sell beautifully if she could manage it for Madame Malkin's.

“Chanel,” said Dominique, dashing all of Lily's hopes.

Of course it was Chanel.

Her cousin Lucy was arriving right behind her with her husband, and Dominique promptly abandoned Lily to fawn over Lucy's husband. Dominique collected people that she felt made her look better, and she adored Hilarion Winston-Fisher because he was a famous Quidditch player and absolutely gorgeous. From the way he was hiding a bit behind his wife, the feeling was not mutual. He and Lucy were both rather quiet, so it was hard to tell if it was shyness or dislike.

Lily decided the idea that Lucy's husband didn't like Dominique was the more fun option for her private musings and made her way cheerfully into the rowhouse. It was filled to the brim with Weasleys and their significant others, because of course virtually everyone except Lily had one of those. She took a slow spin, checking out the room to see who was talking to whom and which group she wanted to join. She wanted to have a word with Rose, since she hadn't got to talk to her since the incident at the Burrow, but Rose was nowhere to be seen. Neither was her boyfriend, Scorpius. Lily's eyes narrowed.

Now that was an interesting development.

No doubt Dominique wasn't sad at Rose's absence, but Lily was dying to know what Rose was up to. Of course she must have some sort of revenge planned, and Lily wanted to know what it was.

She made a beeline for Victoire instead. Victoire and Rose were always hanging round each other, so she was bound to know if Rose was going to show up tonight. Victoire was on the sofa beside her husband, who was deep in conversation with Molly's boyfriend Fitz, talking Quidditch. Victoire looked to be listening half-heartedly to Roxanne, who was standing in front of the sofa gesticulating wildly while she talked to Molly. Various cousins and significant others were dodging her as they walked past, though Roxy didn't seem to notice.

“Oi, Lily,” said Victoire when Lily reached her. “Did you just get here?”

“Just a minute ago.” Lily gave her a significant look. “No Rose, I see.”

Victoire shrugged. “Rose said Dominique could go suck a knarl quill. She's not coming tonight.”

Lily laughed. “Did she say that to her face?”

“No, she's not actually speaking to Dommie right now.” Victoire looked down at her drink and wrinkled her nose. “I wish there was actual tequila in this.”

Teddy heard that and turned to give his wife's rounded belly a pat. “Not long now, and then you can get your booze on.”

She swatted his hand away. “No I can't. I'll be nursing the baby. I'm out of luck for the next couple of months. And it's all your fault.”

Teddy did not look abashed. “I seem to recall you participating too.”

“Go and get me something else.” Victoire shoved the glass into his hand. “And see if you can sneak some food out of the kitchen. I'm starving.”

Teddy took off to raid the kitchen, and Lily settled in his place on the sofa. Victoire's belly seemed to be radiating heat beside her, and Lily shied away a bit, finding herself pressed up against Molly's boyfriend instead.

He looked down at her with a smile. “Hi Lily.”

“Hi Fitz. What are you drinking?” She peered into his glass.

“Vodka gimlet.”

“Oh.” Lily lost interest. Molly drank those, and apparently she had Fitz drinking them now as well. Lily didn't care for sour drinks. “Does Dommie have a bar set up? Can we serve ourselves?”

Roxanne overheard her, and interrupted her own monologue to answer. “Louis is here, so no open bar. I think Dommie is trying to keep him sober enough not to embarrass her.”

“It won't work,” Victoire said with ruthless practicality. “Nothing stops Louis from embarrassing us. Might as well let Reinolt see it now, so if he's going to be scared off, Dommie will know ahead of time.”

“Didn't anyone warn him about Louis?” Roxanne's husband Perry craned his neck, looking around the room, either for Louis or for Dominique's fiance, Lily wasn't sure.

“Did anyone warn you?” Lily asked.

“Oh yes.” Perry turned to her with a wide grin. “I think it was one of the first Weasley stories I heard, the tales of Louis.”

“My favorite is the one where Louis is stuffed in a car boot,” Fitz said, sipping his drink.

“I prefer Louis getting shot in the arse, myself.”

“Shot in the arse is my favorite as well,” Molly agreed. “Fine choice, Perry.”

Lily sighed. Louis was an endless source of embarrassing stories for the family to tell. She sometimes thought she could judge whether a friend or significant other would stick around based on their reaction to Louis and his antics. Fitz and Perry both found him hilariously entertaining. Dominique's first husband hadn't liked him and had tried not to invite him round.

Teddy arrived with a small plate of food for his wife, and Dominique noticed them, her eyes going wide with disapproval.

“I don't think you were supposed to steal food before dinner, Teddy,” Lily remarked.

“Pregnant wife owns my soul, I can't afford manners.”

“Damn right,” agreed the pregnant wife in question, her mouth already full.

Dominique called them to the table a moment later. Lily was seated down the end, since as always Dominique had arranged the table to place those she considered most important (in other words, famous) nearest to her and her fiance. Molly, Fitz, Lucy, and Hilarion appeared to have that honor tonight, thanks to their professional Quidditch connections. Lily had been relegated to the position of least importance, along with her cousin Hugo and her brother Albus.

“Oi, you,” she said to her brother as she sat down across from him. “What'd you say to Hob?”

Albus affected great innocence. “Hob?”

“He was acting very odd when we had coffee the other day.” Lily shook a finger at him. “Leave him alone, you tosser.”

“I'm telling Mum you called me names.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I'll do worse if you don't butt out.”

“Why, do you fancy him? _Hob_?” Albus asked disparagingly.

When he took that tone, she'd be damned if she'd answer that question. “Butt out, Albus. I mean it.”

Hugo heaved a sigh from beside her. “Albus, please butt out.”

“Oh, you always take her side.” Albus turned away to talk to Perry, who was seated beside him. Perry was a composer, and not famous at all, so he and Roxanne were down the end of the table too. Roxanne had a tendency to make Dominique nervous or uncomfortable, so of course she hadn't put Roxy nearby.

“Thanks, Hugo.” Lily turned her attention to her cousin. Hugo was almost exactly her age, and they'd grown up being rather constantly thrown together because of it, especially at school. She was extremely fond of him, particularly since he didn't baby her the way her older brothers did.

“Do you actually fancy Hob?” he asked in a low voice, making sure Albus didn't overhear.

“No. What I fancy is not going alone to the wedding.”

“Cheers,” Hugo said, starting on his soup. Dominique's dinner parties were always several courses, and her cooking was excellent. Nearly everything Dominique did, she did well (generally quite ostentatiously well), which was one of the many reasons Lily didn't like her much.

“What about you? Who are you taking to the wedding?”

“A co-worker. You haven't met her.”

Lily was intrigued. “Do you fancy her? Is this a serious date?”

Hugo glanced over her shoulder at Dominique, his red brows drawing together in a small frown. “No. I chose her because Dommie will hate her. Everyone hates her, all the teams.”

Lily nodded sagely at that. No doubt because of what Dominique had said about his sister. Now that was how she wished her brothers would be protective of her, instead of running off all her potential dates. “Good for you. That's proper brotherly behavior, right there. So she's another Healer for the League, is she?”

“Yeah. Vastly unpleasant person. I don't know how she keeps her job. She's been banned from two teams because she made the coaches angry.”

“Which teams?” Lily adored gossip. Hugo usually wasn't one to pass any on, so she assumed this was something that was considered general knowledge in the Quidditch world. He would never share confidential information.

“Wigtown and Portree.”

She let out a burst of laughter at that. The coach for the Pride of Portree was her cousin Molly's boyfriend Fitz. She indicated him with her spoon and asked, “Does he know you're bringing this woman?”

Hugo cracked a smile. “No. I probably ought to warn him. I mean, I don't care if she starts anything at the wedding – that's sort of the point, actually – but Molly would probably be a little miffed if I get Fitz dragged into a duel.”

Lily was briefly impressed. Hugo was really pulling out all the stops if duels were even a consideration where his date was concerned. Though since she knew for a fact Fitz had been arrested for getting in a Muggle-style brawl once, it probably wasn't totally out of bounds to expect.

“I suppose that'll get one in for your side,” she said then. “For your sister, I mean.”

Hugo grunted and pushed his soup bowl aside, eyeing Dominique's red-gold head down the table. “And may it teach her a lesson.”

After all the dinner courses were finally wrapped up, Dominique served coffee in the living room. Hugo took his cup and wandered round the room, wishing his sister was there to keep him entertained. Lily was fun, of course, nearly a second sister, but he found himself missing Rose and Scorpius. He sidled up to James and Navya, who were sitting with Albus and Fred.

Fred pulled a flask out of his pocket. “Make it Irish, anyone?”

James held out his cup, and Fred added a bit of whiskey to the coffee. Navya waved this off, probably serving as Designated Apparator for the two of them, and Hugo accepted a splash of whiskey in his own drink.

He had just taken a sip of the doctored coffee when Dominique appeared beside him. Fred quickly stowed the flask, and either Dominique hadn't seen it or she pretended she hadn't.

“Hugo, can I have a quick word?” she whispered, nodding her head toward the now-empty dining room.

Warily, Hugo followed her into the other room, wondering if she was about to tell him off about his sister or make some new insulting remark about her instead.

Dominique wrapped both arms around herself and leaned closer to him. “I wanted to ask you something.”

He gave her a look that said to spit it out, and she looked over her shoulder, making sure they were alone.

“I wanted to know what you think of Reinolt,” she said in a low voice.

This was very nearly the last thing Hugo had expected her to say. He had spoken briefly with her fiance when he'd arrived and found the Dutch baron pleasant enough, but the idea that Dominique might ask his opinion of the man had never crossed his mind.

Dominique had never asked him for his opinion on anything before that he could recall.

She took in his surprise and went on, “Look, I know you had some training in psychological Healing before you started with the League, and after everything that happened with Andrew, I just wanted your professional opinion that I wasn't making the same mistake again.”

Hugo was floored. “You want to know if I think Reinolt will turn out to be a criminal like Andrew?”

“Or a cheat like Andrew. Yes.” Her expression had turned mulish, reminding him sharply of her sister. “And I trust you to keep it quiet, too, that I asked you.”

“Of course,” he said, softening a bit toward her. “He seemed all right to me, Dommie. I liked him. I don't think you need worry he'll wind up like Andrew did.”

“Did you think Andrew would be that way, when you first met him?”

“Well...” Hugo tried to recall his first impression of Dominique's ex-husband. It had been a few years since he'd originally met Andrew Campbell, but he remembered thinking the man was a prat from day one. “I never liked Andrew, to be honest. I wouldn't have pegged him for a criminal, but I can't say I was surprised that he cheated.”

“But not Reinolt.” Her face was still tight with stress.

“I don't think so, no. There's no way to guarantee.” That probably hadn't sounded very reassuring, though it was true. He wasn't going to lie to her about it just to be comforting, if only because that would violate the ethics of his profession. He wondered what else he could say. “Did you have a background check done on Reinolt?”

She bristled. “Of course I did, I'm not stupid. And I've an iron-clad prenup, too.”

That was mostly thanks to his mother, not that Dominique had acknowledged it. The prenup would protect her financially and even in a lot of legal ways, but it wouldn't keep her from being hurt. He sighed. “Look, Dommie, you can't know for sure. All you can do is trust your instincts.”

Her face took on a hunted look. All right, so she didn't think she could trust her instincts. That was probably understandable given that she'd already married one bloke that ran around on her and went to prison. Hugo cast about for something diplomatic to say, but Dominique shook her head at him before he could think of anything.

“Well, I suppose you're right, there's no guarantee. I'll just have to hope for the best. Thanks anyway, Hugo.” She patted her hair, though it was still just as perfectly coiffed as it had been all night. “I hope you didn't say anything to Reinolt about this sort of thing, though.”

“I thought you trusted me to be discreet,” he said, mildly annoyed.

“I'm sure you did your best. Make sure you don't say anything to your sister, of course. Lord knows she hasn't the sense God gave green apples. I'd better get back to my guests.” She bustled off back to the living room, leaving Hugo standing alone, surveying the table full of dirty plates and half-drunk goblets of wine, still feeling annoyed that Dominique could never just leave things kindly.

She always had to show she was better than the rest of them.

Well, he'd show her. For half a moment, while she'd seemed vulnerable, asking him what he thought of her future husband and worrying that her second marriage would fail the way her first had, he'd felt a pang of guilt that he'd chosen a date merely to irritate her. The thought had even crossed his mind to cancel on Gwyneira.

But that thought had passed. Dommie needed to be taken down a peg or two.


	5. Cavemen

Lily awoke three days before the wedding to the sound of an owl tapping at her window. Pushing her hair out of her face, she stumbled out of bed to open the window. The owl did not look familiar, and she frowned a bit as she unrolled it.

The frown deepened to a scowl once she'd started reading.

Bloody Dominique could ruin anything, even clothes. Lily loved clothes. What Lily did not love was dress codes. The parchment Dominique had sent over included a long list of bullet points of appropriate clothing to wear to the wedding. Avoiding drawing attention from the Muggles present was one thing; Dominique, however, wanted to control how all of her relatives presented themselves. Given that the letter included examples and instructions for both male and female dress, Lily could only assume everyone had gotten this. It seemed par for the course for Dominique.

Fully awake now, Lily headed for her living room and the Floo grate. Her brother Albus was first on the list.

“Did you get a list from Dommie?” she demanded as soon as he spun into view, sitting at his breakfast table.

Albus waved a sheet of parchment at her. “She doesn't trust us at all. First no wands, and now we've got dress instructions?”

“Bloody ridiculous. I know how to dress appropriately for a wedding.”

“I hope she didn't send this to Rose,” Albus remarked. “She'll see it as a challenge. Between her and Scorpius, they ought to be able to tick off every item on that list.”

Lily shook her head. “He'd never let her do it.”

Albus tapped the parchment and it burst into pink flames, smoldering quickly into ash on his plate. Lily watched this with satisfaction. She didn't want to burn hers yet, though.

“Who's your date, Albus?”

He assumed a serene expression that she found rather annoying. “No one you've met.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Loser.”

“Twat.”

Lily pulled her head out of the fireplace and watched as the green flames died out, pursing her lips as she looked down at the letter from Dominique again.

_All women must have natural hair color, with hair put up. No one may have unusual haircuts._

_Makeup should be conservative, and lip color only in neutral shades of pink. Do not wear dark lipstick._

_No smokey eyes or false lashes._

“Don't look prettier than the bride,” Lily muttered. “Don't have better makeup.”

As if Dominique wasn't hiring a professional to do her hair and makeup. Why did she have to make so many rules? If she'd just asked them all not to draw attention to themselves, to blend in with the Muggles, no one would mind. They were all already making the effort to do that, with approval by Aunt Hermione and Aunt Audrey, who were both Muggle-born and knew all about how Muggles dressed. Hell, Lily's father had been raised Muggle. He knew how to look like a Muggle when he wanted to.

Lily scanned the list of acceptable perfumes, dress lengths and fabrics, and color schemes. Mentally she compared these to her chosen dress. It fit all the criteria except length, since the skirt was above the knee. She wasn't about to change it now, though. The dress was perfect.

If Dominique tried to make her change it, she'd tell her mother. In fact, telling her mother now sounded like a bloody brilliant idea.

She rushed back to her room to get dressed.

When she arrived at her parents' house, Dominique's letter in hand, her mother was in the kitchen with Granny Weasley, both of them holding teacups as if they were shields and looking a little huffy.

Ginny poured a cup of tea and handed it to Lily. “Morning, dear.”

“Mum, look what Dominique sent.” Lily took the teacup and handed over the letter.

“Oh dear,” said Granny. “What's she done now?”

Ginny was scanning the letter with brows raised. “I can't say I'm surprised. You know she sent something to us last week asking your dad if he could hide his scar for the wedding?”

Granny Weasley looked horrified. “She didn't!”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable. Dad isn't going to do it, is he?”

“He said he'd talk to Bill about it first. Why hide his scar when Bill can't possibly hide his?”

Explaining Uncle Bill's ruined face would be much harder than explaining Dad's scar, Lily reflected. At least the famous scar was quite small. A bit of vanishing makeup and it would be mostly invisible. Uncle Bill's, on the other hand...

“The best he could do is some sort of Muggle-repelling variant,” Lily said thoughtfully. “So they forget his scars after they see them. Dad wouldn't have to go that far. His is much smaller.”

Ginny shrugged. “If Dominique insists, Bill will do it, but he won't be happy. And your auntie Fleur will have a few words for your cousin about it.”

“Your poor brother,” Granny sighed, sipping her tea. “Bless him, he does spoil that girl.”

“He spoiled Victoire just as much and look how well she turned out,” Ginny pointed out.

“True. And then there's Louis.”

All three of them heaved a sigh in unison for Louis.

“Well, don't worry about this,” Ginny told her daughter, tapping the letter. “You have excellent taste in clothing, and I'm sure whatever you're wearing will be lovely. Now, drink up. We're going shopping for your granny.”

Lily's eyes widened. “Dominique didn't make a rule for Gran, did she? She wouldn't dare.”

“Oh, I'll bet she would,” Ginny said briskly. “But she didn't. Gran needs new dress robes, that's all.”

Her grandmother huffed into her teacup. “We don't need to shop. It's a dreadful waste of money.”

“Mum, you're not going to wear those same robes to Dominique's wedding. You wore them to her first wedding, and to Lucy's as well.”

Lily eyed her grandmother worriedly. It was true, Granny had worn the same set of dress robes to both Dommie's and Lucy's weddings, and Victoire's as well, and every other fancy occasion that Lily could remember in the past ten years. Lily had never been sure if her grandmother simply loved those robes or if she didn't want to buy new ones. Granny Weasley was sometimes overly frugal with money, having spent a large portion of her adult life living in poverty, and now living on Granddad's pension, they didn't have much extra each month. It wasn't exactly something anyone discussed, but Lily was aware that her parents (and her uncles) had been assisting her grandparents with money for years.

“It's just silly,” Granny muttered. “There's no need for it. I'm eighty-six years old, what do I need brand new robes for?”

“You've got a bit thinner lately, Mum. And this wedding is very fancy. We all need something new to wear.”

“Oh, pish.” Granny set her teacup down on the counter beside the kettle. Lily took her in, examining the familiar, sturdy little figure of her grandmother. She had got a bit thinner through the shoulders lately, and her limbs were starting to get that spindly look of very old age. It gave Lily a pang to notice it, and she reached over to give her grandmother a pat on the hand. Granny Weasley clasped Lily's hand for a moment, and her hand was reassuringly strong under the papery skin.

Ginny heaved a long-suffering sigh. Clearly Lily had interrupted an ongoing argument about the shopping. “Mother. I'm buying myself a dress. Let me buy you a dress as well.”

“I don't want you to spend your money on me. I can wear my old robes, they're perfectly good still-”

“Don't worry, Mum,” Ginny said with determined cheer and an air about her of bringing out the big guns. “I'm spending Harry's money. You wouldn't want to disappoint him when he thinks we're buying you some lovely new robes for the wedding, would you?”

Granny frowned a bit and patted her white curls. She had a well-known soft spot for Lily's father. Lily could see it overriding Granny's determination not to spend money on fripperies. “Well...”

“We'll use my discount at Madame Malkin's,” Lily put in, throwing in her support. “And Dad can buy me a new dress as well.”

Her mother looked triumphant but hid it quickly. Having a discount was sure to sway Granny in their favor. As a purchaser for the robe shop, Lily had a significant employee discount. She was well accustomed to various cousins and aunts asking her to shop with them in order to take advantage of it, but she didn't mind. They almost always bought her lunch afterward.

“Come on, Mum.” Ginny put an arm around her mother's shoulders. “Let's go shopping.”

“Oh, I suppose so...”

Granny Weasley put up another fuss about the shopping once they were pawing through the racks at Madame Malkin's, but it seemed only a token effort now. Her eyes began to gleam as they looked through dozens of robes in watercolor pastels with embroidered floral designs. Lily selected a few with chiffon capelets in shades of blue, while her mother picked out greens and pinks.

“Oh, I've never cared for pink-” Granny began, but Ginny only shook her head.

“Mum, you haven't been a ginger in years. Try the pink.”

Once Granny was safely ensconced in a dressing room with a selection of gowns, Ginny and Lily collapsed onto one of the velvet-upholstered sofas nearby to wait for her.

“You'd think she hadn't been shopping since the nineties,” Ginny grumbled. “The way she carries on about the prices, honestly.”

Lily pulled her feet up underneath her, curling up on the sofa and making herself at home. She'd worked at Madame Malkin's for five years now, so it felt like home. The sales girls didn't even bother to try to make a sale, just let Lily have the run of the shop.

“Who are you bringing to the wedding, dear?” her mother asked while they waited.

“James's friend Hob.”

Ginny looked at her askance. “Really? Didn't he once jump off the roof and break his leg?”

Lily had forgotten about that particular story. “That was Hob?”

Ginny sighed. “Well, he's not the sharpest quill on the knarl, but he should be a laugh, anyway.”

“Fred set us up,” Lily admitted. “I didn't have a date on my own.”

“You could have just come with me and your father. Or I could've set you up with someone.”

Lily didn't want to know who her mother would've chosen for her. She didn't think a parental setup was good anyway. If she liked the bloke, she'd always have it in the back of her mind that her mother had picked him out. Like when she was a child and her mother picked out her clothes.

Ginny appeared to sense her reluctance. “Well, never mind. I'm sure you'll have fun with Hob. Did your brothers try to scare him off yet?”

“Of course. Idiots.”

“Hob knows those two, he won't be bothered.”

Lily didn't really care if he was bothered or not, so long as he showed up. James and Albus, on the other hand... “I wish they would stop doing that. It was one thing at school but we're too old for it now.”

“Think of it this way. Anyone you'd want to keep around will have to be able to stand up to your brothers. Those two behaving like cavemen ahead of time screens out the ones who wouldn't make it.”

“They _are_ cavemen,” Lily muttered.

Ginny was warming to her topic. “And it's nice that they look out for you. My brothers did the same. Though your uncle Ron got pretty judgey about my boyfriends at school. He was jealous since he hardly had any girlfriends, just pined after Hermione most of the time. Anyway, James and Albus would always protect you if you needed it. Anything from a stern talking-to up to trussing a bloke up like a suckling pig, they'd do it.”

“It's when I don't need it and they do it anyway that annoys me,” said Lily.

“Ah, well,” Ginny said philosophically. “Brothers. They mean well, mostly. I'll talk to them and remind them you're not thirteen anymore.”

It seemed unlikely to do any good, but it was a nice thought. “Thanks, Mum.”

“You think you've got it bad,” Ginny added. “You've only got two brothers. I had six.”

Lily shook her head sympathetically. “It's a wonder you ever got together with Dad at all.”

Granny poked her head out of the dressing room. “I don't know about the color on these, Ginny dear.”

Ginny bustled off to assist her mother, and Lily heaved a sigh as she watched them fussing over the robes. Maybe her mother was right. Hob would be fun, once he settled down from being nervous that James and Albus would hex him, but she wasn't attracted to him in any case. After the wedding, she'd drop Hob and look for someone she _was_ attracted to. She did want someone who could stand up to her brothers, that was true. Someone tough enough to not care what those two idiots said, but not so macho that Lily wouldn't like him.

Too macho was not her type.

She started making a mental list of what she wanted. Funny, sure. Smart. Able to fend off her brothers. Not overwhelmed by her dad. Not put off by Louis, or Rose, or Johnny Lupin, or any of her other mental relatives.

Maybe she ought to put out an ad in the Daily Prophet for some sort of cowboy. That sounded about right.

“Oh, forget it,” Lily muttered to herself, and went to talk Granny Weasley into something in a flattering blue.

*

The British and Irish Quidditch League normally only kept two Healers on call during a game. When the Falmouth Falcons were playing, they staffed five Healers. Hugo had his acid green leather bag slung across his chest, filled with the most commonly used potions and a few other sundries that might come in handy, as he relaxed in the coaches' box, waiting for the game to start.

Two of his fellow Healers were already in the box beside him. Dabney and Nutting were leaning against the wall at the back of the box, chatting quietly. Ottwell was always late, but Gwyneira ought to have been here by now. Among her few good qualities was punctuality.

But when Harvey Ottwell finally strolled in, it wasn't Gwyneira Griffiths beside him. It was Matty Chesebrough.

“Where's Gwen?” Hugo asked as Ottwell and Chesebrough joined him.

“She's got dragon pox,” Chesebrough told him. “I'm covering for her.”

“You're joking. Dragon pox?”

Chesebrough shook her head, her blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders. “She said she didn't get vaccinated as a child. Parents were a little nutty, I take it. Explains a lot, I thought. How're the teams looking?”

Hugo let the others answer that, more concerned with Gwen's illness. Dragon pox could take anywhere from three weeks to two months to run its course. Even if Gwyneira recovered on the faster end of that scale, it would be too late.

He was out a date for the wedding.

Groaning inwardly, Hugo turned back to the group to join in the plans of attack for the game. He was assigned to be the watchdog, sitting in the stand with the coaches for Falmouth and Puddlemere, to keep an eye on the game and play early triage. Having a trained witness was often vital when the Falcons were around, for identification of the injury source. Their team motto was even painted across the door of their infirmary.

_Let us win, but if we cannot win, let us break a few heads._

Once the game was over and Falmouth had defeated Puddlemere (and broken a few of their arms, if not their heads), Hugo headed for Gwyneira's flat.

She took her time answering his knock, and once again didn't open the door.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, barely visible through the crack in the door. The bit of skin he could see was green and bumpy. “I've got-”

“Dragon pox. I heard. Can't believe you weren't inoculated when you were little.”

“Blame my parents. I do.”

Hugo tried to look sympathetic, since she was probably rather miserable (though how one could tell, he wasn't sure, given her usual state of being). “Hope it's a mild bout of it.”

She sneezed, shooting a few purple sparks out of her nose. “Yeah right.”

“Anything I can do?”

“You can leave me the hell alone.”

Hugo had a great deal of practice holding his temper. He considered it one of his finest achievements, in fact, considering what his sister and cousins were like. He breathed slowly through his nose to a count of three, then said calmly, “I was just trying to be polite.”

She snorted and rubbed her nose. A single spark rolled down the back of her hand, and she shook it off. “Don't bother. Look, if you're worried about losing your date for that wedding, don't bother with that, either. I've covered it.”

Hugo's stomach flipped. “You did? Who?”

“My cousin. She's nicer than me,” Gwyneira said disparagingly. “I told her the objective is pissing off your cousin, but I doubt she can manage it. I already passed on your owl with all the details, so she'll meet you at the international portkeys. I'm going back to bed now.”

The door closed, and he heard her sneeze again behind it, then her footsteps shuffled off.

Hugo gently banged his head against the putrid yellow paint of her front door. Gwyneira's cousin. God help him.


	6. Portkeys

The Portkey Exchange was bustling, but the Potters had found a quiet corner where they could gather. Lily had been waiting there with her parents for the last twenty minutes. Despite the quiet corner, she was still feeling the stress of their location. Somewhere nearby, a dog started barking, echoing in the high ceilings of the Exchange. The sound made her want to run for the nearest exit.

She glanced around impatiently. “We're going to miss our Portkey.”

“Relax,” said her mother.

Her father checked his watch. “We can always leave without them.”

“I told James the Portkey leaves fifteen minutes before it actually does,” Ginny said serenely. “He's my son. I know he's always late.”

“Three weeks past his due date,” agreed Harry.

“Hasn't been on time since.”

Lily rolled her eyes and sat down beside Hob. She had heard her parents' schtick about James and his chronic lateness her entire life.

Hob, who had not, was grinning. “Tell me more about James's bad qualities, Mrs. Potter.”

Harry snorted, but before either of her parents could let Hob in on his friend's secrets, James turned up with Navya by his side. James looked harried, his shirt untucked and hair sticking up at the back. Navya was as put-together as always in a tailored set of navy blue robes, her dark hair twisted into a tidy chignon.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully, waving to the Potters and Hob. Harry and Ginny smiled at her in welcome; they quite liked their son's girlfriend. Lily had tried not to like Navya because of that – since her parents hardly ever liked her own significant others – but it was hard to dislike anyone who got James to obey orders. Usually James was the ringleader of every group he was in, with people like Hob doing whatever he said (ribbing him about it all the while, but still doing it). Seeing him taken down a peg or two by a tiny little tyrant in spike heels was lovely, actually.

“Oi,” mumbled James, throwing himself into the seat beside Hob.

Lily examined her brother carefully. “James, are you hung over?”

“No, just had to rush to get out the door. I told her we've plenty of time, the Portkey doesn't leave for another half hour-”

“Forty-five minutes,” Lily broke in.

James slumped even further in his chair. “Bloody hell. Mum lied about the time again?”

“I don't know how this can surprise you after all these years.”

“Where's Albus? Isn't he supposed to be here?”

“In the loo, isn't he?” Hob looked round. “Maybe he fell in.”

“Right behind you, mate.” Albus poked his brother in the back of the head. “I see Navya forced you to be on time.”

“Where's your date, Albus?” James needled him. “Imaginary?”

“Arriving tomorrow.”

“Imaginary,” James said to Hob.

“If we're all here, can we go early?” Ginny asked. She turned to her husband and stage-whispered, “Let's ditch the children at the hotel, dear.”

Harry threw an arm around her shoulders. “Next time Dominique gets married, let's just go by ourselves and let them take their own Portkey.”

The hotel the Potters were staying in was a few blocks from the enormous old church where Dominique was getting married. It was painted bright red on the exterior, a narrow building squeezed between a couple of shops. From the décor, Lily was guessing it had been there since Dumbledore was a boy. While they were in the lobby checking into their rooms, Uncle Ron sauntered out of the carpeted stairwell and over to stand beside Harry, rocking back on his heels.

“Oi. Portkey went all right?”

“Yeah. James was on time.”

Uncle Ron affected an astonished look. “What, _your_ son James?”

Harry was grinning widely now. “All thanks to Navya, of course. Under his own steam he'd never have made it.”

“She's a keeper, that one. You ought to marry her before she realizes what a toad you are,” Uncle Ron added to James.

James rolled his eyes at the two of them. Navya smiled and managed not to look smug.

“Subtle, Ron,” said Ginny, sliding her brother a sidelong look. “Where's your wife?”

“More importantly, where's your daughter?” Lily asked. No one had seen Rose for the last fortnight, nor heard from her either. Not even Hugo knew what she was up to. Rose didn't go underground like this for long, so something was up. Lily was dying to know what she was planning as revenge against Dominique.

“Wife's upstairs. Daughter not here til later this evening. Son arriving in an hour or so.” Ron elbowed Harry in the ribs. “Grab a pint with me?”

“Sure. Got a place in mind?”

“I hope you weren't grabbing a pint without me.” Aunt Hermione appeared behind them, her hair floating around her in a wild cloud. Travel never seemed to agree with her hair; changes in humidity made her hair frizzy. Aunt Hermione didn't seem bothered, though.

“Okay, we're all checked in.” Ginny handed room keys around: one each for her children and one for Hob. Navya was, of course, staying in James's room. Lily noted her mother had not put Hob in the room beside hers.

Hob didn't seem to notice. He was looking round the hotel lobby. “Where's Fred, isn't he supposed to be here?”

James waved this off. “Later on. Mum, Dad, where are you going for that pint?”

“Grown-ups only,” Ginny said firmly. “You lot aren't invited.”

“Rude,” gasped James.

Lily put a hand to her forehead and made a practiced faint into Albus's arms. Albus caught her neatly under her arms, her back against his chest. This had been one of their favorite routines since their teenage years, and Albus could still catch her fake faints at the drop of a hat.

“Her poor heart.” Albus assumed a look of melodramatic concern. “It just couldn't take the parental neglect.”

Uncle Ron snorted. “Come on, Harry, let's go. I promise I won't call the authorities on you for leaving your children to go boozing.”

Albus boosted Lily back to her feet and waved them off. “Go on, then. Child abusers. I'm telling Gran.”

Lily waved to her mother, whose eyes were twinkling as she slipped out the door behind the other three. Then she turned to her brothers, Navya, and Hob. “Well, what should we do? Go exploring?”

“I'm going to go unpack and take a nap,” Navya declared. “We'll be up late with the pub crawl tonight.”

“I'm napping with her,” James put in.

Hob grinned at them and put up his hands for air quotes. “Napping?”

“Shut up.”

Navya took James by the hand and led him upstairs.

Albus waved his key at them. “I'm going to drop my things in my room, then let's get out of here. Hob, ever been to the Heineken Experience?”

“Twice. Let's go.”

“I reckon I'll unpack, then,” Lily said, feeling a little out of sorts. A beer exhibit wasn't her cup of tea, not that either of them had asked her. They didn't seem concerned about ditching her.

“See you later, Lily.” Albus dashed upstairs with Hob on his heels.

Lily folded her arms over her chest and heaved a sigh.

*

Hugo had told Gwyneira that he had arranged a Portkey at two the afternoon before the wedding. Since she hadn't bothered to give him any of her cousin's contact information, only said she'd passed on what he'd given her, all he could do was show up at the appointed time and hope his unknown date would do the same. Once he was through all the security checkpoints at the International Portkey Exchange, he sat down outside the number fifteen departure point and waited, wondering if he was in fact going to wind up stag for the wedding after all.

At ten minutes til, someone tapped him on the shoulder and then sat down next to him.

“Hi,” said a brunette witch with a cheerful grin and ruby-red lipstick. “You must be Hugo Weasley.”

“How could you tell?” he asked, straightening in his chair.

She pointed at his hair, the distinctive Weasley red.

He laughed at that. “Most of my family is traveling to Amsterdam today. I might have been any Weasley.”

“You looked like you were waiting for someone.” She gave him a cheeky smile.

Hugo found himself smiling back. She was pretty, with bright brown eyes and a handful of freckles across her narrow little nose. She didn't look much like her cousin, that was for sure, and so far she didn't act at all like her. She was still smiling at him, a faint dimple in each cheek, and he didn't even know her name, but something deep inside him clicked into place.

“Apparently I was waiting for you,” he said, and held out his hand. “I'm Hugo Weasley.”

“I'm Glenna Griffiths. Nice to meet you.” She shook his hand.

“Do you mind if I ask why you agreed to come?”

She took the question in stride. “Quite the opener. I suppose you must be wondering. Well, I've never been to Amsterdam and it sounded like a lark. And Gwen told me you only wanted someone to annoy your cousin, so I didn't reckon you'd be picky who your date was.”

“Fair enough. I suppose I wouldn't turn down a free trip either, even if it does mean a wedding.”

“Oh, I don't mind weddings,” remarked Glenna. “Weddings are lovely. So much free food.”

“My cousin is marrying a baron. The food is bound to be excellent. And there's an open bar.”

“Even better. Mind if I ask exactly how you were expecting Gwen to behave to your cousin at her wedding?”

He supposed that was a fair enough question as well. “I don't want to make a scene or anything, just a few digs at her to puncture her ego would do it.”

Glenna nodded. “Gwen would've been an excellent choice, then. Sorry she got sick. I'm not sure I can be as rude as her, but I'll try.”

“You can just come along,” Hugo found himself saying. “I don't think that plan is going to work now.”

“You don't think I can be annoying?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

He found the very idea unimaginable. She was adorable, and he'd only known her for a few minutes. “I highly doubt it, but maybe we can double-team the bride somehow.”

She laughed and glanced at her watch. “Almost time. Shall we?”

He tried not to stare at her as they stood waiting for the Portkey to activate, holding a neon yellow sock between them, but found he couldn't help himself. Glenna was looking brightly around the room as if everything there interested her, and didn't seem to notice his gaze. She was nearly the same height as him, only an inch or two shorter, and her straight brown hair tumbled halfway down her back, swishing in a shining dark sheet as she moved her head. Her eyes were rimmed with navy blue eyeliner in a cat's eye shape, the same shade as the t-shirt she was wearing with a pair of faded jeans. She had an athletic build, rather like his cousin Molly, though not as slender as Molly was.

She looked much, much better in those jeans than his cousin would, of course.

The sock began to glow in his hands, drawing his attention.

“Here we go,” he said, and she looked round and smiled at him just as the Portkey hooked behind his belly button and pulled.

Once they had landed, dusted themselves off, and found a handy trash can to dispose of the used Portkey sock, Hugo looked round to try to orient himself. They had landed in a narrow alley off an almost as narrow street lined with tall buildings, all in shades of beige and brown brick. One of the canals was visible at one end of the street. He didn't recognize any landmarks, and Glenna had distracted him to the point that he couldn't remember the walking route he'd planned out when booking the Portkey.

“I have no idea where we are, so I hope you know how to get to the hotel,” Glenna said cheerfully. She put a hand to her eyes to shade them. “It's so beautiful here! Look at the bridges. I love them.”

“Hang on, I'll find the way.” He pulled out his wand, holding it flat on the palm of his hand, and told it, “ _Point me_.”

The wand spun around, homing in on the direction of their hotel, and they set off. Glenna fell into step easily beside him, their similar heights making it quite comfortable to walk together.

“What spell was that? I don't think I've seen that one before.”

“Oh, it's just one my mother taught me. Think she might've invented it, to be honest. Never saw it in any schoolbooks.”

“Your mother invented a spell?” Glenna looked impressed. “Wow, that's wild. Does she do that a lot?”

Hugo shrugged. “I think she did more when she was younger than she does now. She's more concerned with law these days.”

“Is she a lawyer?”

They passed the time discussing their parents as they made their way to the hotel. She had, of course, read about his parents in History of Magic at school, though the class had focused mostly on his uncle Harry when discussing the fall of Voldemort. To Hugo's relief, while she seemed interested, she didn't get that star-struck look that people sometimes got at the mention of Harry Potter. His cousins had it worse, with him being their dad, but anyone who'd read about the war knew who Hugo's parents were too. Somehow he didn't want Glenna to turn out to be one of the celebrity-chasers.

Glenna's parents, it turned out, came from a long line of Herbologists. He'd never known much about the Griffiths family, since Gwyneira was so standoffish, and the revelation that her relatives were so very normal came as something of a shock. Most of them, Glenna assured him, were not like Gwyneira at all.

“And did you continue the tradition?” Hugo asked, pointing to their hotel, now visible up the street. “With Herbology, I mean.”

“I tried, but it wasn't for me. I'm a linguistic historian.”

Hugo raised an eyebrow. That sounded rather bookish for someone as cheerful and athletic-looking as her. “What do you do with that, then?”

“Oh, I study the history of spell language. It's really interesting to see the evolution of spell words from the Latin, ancient Greek, and early medieval languages into modern spells. And of course, the sort of thoroughly modern spells that your mother invented. In English and everything.” She chuckled then, the musical sound running straight down Hugo's spine. “ _Point me_.”

It occurred to Hugo that his mother was going to love Glenna.

After they'd checked into their rooms (Hugo naturally having booked Gwyneira her own room to minimize their potential contact apart from the wedding itself - this arrangement being significantly less appealing with his new and improved date), Hugo took a moment to pull his tux out of the magically expanded rucksack he'd packed it in, to make sure it aired before the wedding. He wasn't much good with anti-wrinkling spells, so he hoped those hung out overnight, or his grandmother might have to do one for him at the wedding.

A knock at his door drew his attention, and Glenna poked her head in.

“Is that your tux? Very nice, I can't wait to see it on. Want to go exploring with me? We've all afternoon still.”

All afternoon exploring Amsterdam with her. He looked at the dimples and the sparkling brown eyes, once again feeling that click deep inside.

“Yes,” Hugo said decisively. “Let's go.”

*

They wandered around the city rather aimlessly, since neither had brought a map, pointing out interesting buildings to each other, and eventually wound up at a small cafe near the Rijksmuseum for coffee.

“So what's the story with the bride?” Glenna asked, stirring sugar into her cup.

“What makes you think there's a story?” Hugo asked with a grin.

She gave him a look. “Well, for one thing, you deliberately set out to bring a date that would make her angry on her wedding day. You picked _Gwen_. That really says something about a person.”

It occurred to Hugo how that must have sounded to Glenna before she met him. With Gwyneira, it hadn't mattered, but now... “That doesn't make _me_ sound good, does it?”

She gave him a slow, considering look, then said, “No, I suppose not. But you seem very kind-hearted, so what type of a bride makes someone like you want to do something to annoy her on her wedding day? She must be a horrible bitch, eh?”

That gave Hugo a warm flush. “You think I'm kind-hearted?”

“Focus,” she told him with a smile. “What's her story?”

Hugo let out a sigh and tried to think how to explain Dommie. “Well, there's a long story with Dominique. I don't suppose you've read her book?”

She shook her head. “'Bewitched and Betrayed' or something like that. I've seen it but I haven't read it.”

“She's a bit of a social climber. Snobbish. Sometimes pretends to have a French accent even though she was brought up in Cornwall.”

“Ah,” Glenna said wisely. “One of those.”

“Yeah. She acts like she's better than the rest of us, has ever since she married her first husband. Well, in fairness, she was a bit like that as a teenager, too. I thought that divorce might have knocked her down a peg, but she came back swinging, that's for sure. This new bloke is a baron.”

“Leveling up in the snobbery, there. A title.”

“I don't think that's why she's marrying him, though it might be why she picked him in the first place,” Hugo admitted. “But I do think she loves him.”

“Yet you wanted to annoy her at the wedding.”

“She said my sister is a bad mother,” he told her baldly.

Glenna's eyebrows rose. “That's fighting words, there.”

Understatement of the year, that was. “Yeah.”

“And what is your sister doing about it?”

Hugo stirred his coffee, feeling a bit nettled that Rose still hadn't told him what she was up to. “I don't know, she wouldn't tell me. Dad told her not to punch Dommie in the jaw, though.”

“That seems best. Especially at the wedding.”

“She's got something up her sleeve, but she wouldn't tell me. I hadn't got a chance to corner her boyfriend and try to make him tell me what she's up to.”

“So you were going to set Gwyneira on the wedding to get one in for your sister, is that it?”

Hugo nodded. Glenna let out a chuckle.

“She would've been great. Just being her natural self, she was bound to offend someone. Sorry she couldn't make it.”

“I'm not. I'm having much more fun with you than I would have with her.”

Glenna smiled but gave him a look. “This isn't really a real date, you know.”

“It could be.” It felt like a real date to him. His stomach dropped suddenly with a horrible realization. “Unless you're not single?”

“Oh no, I'm very single,” Glenna said with a slight edge to her voice. “Extremely so.”

Before he could ask about that, her eyes widened suddenly and she blurted out, “You're single too, aren't you?”

“I wouldn't have taken Gwyneira if I wasn't,” Hugo said.

Glenna relaxed visibly. “Oh. Right. I thought you must be, only... Well. Good, then.”

“Very good.”

They looked at each other across the table for a few beats of silence. Hugo decided not to push her about why she was 'extremely single' when he was only just getting to know her. He didn't want to scare her off. She didn't seem on the verge of that, but there had been something brittle in her voice when she'd made that comment.

Extremely so.

“What time are we supposed to meet up with your relatives?” Glenna asked then.

Hugo was rather surprised to find she really had read everything he'd written to her cousin about the details of the weekend. He'd marked the pre-wedding Weasley pub crawl as 'optional' for Gwyneira, worried that she'd offend Dominique too early on in the weekend and get both of them banned from the wedding by someone's mother. “Seven. Do you want to come, then?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “A pub crawl? Yeah.”

A pub crawl with all his cousins. It was time for the family disclaimer. “Right. I've got to warn you about my cousin Louis, then.”


	7. Weasley Pub Crawl

“I feel like I'm going to an audition,” Glenna remarked as they approached the starting point of the pub crawl. She was walking beside Hugo in the same pair of jeans she'd worn earlier, but now with a dressier top, this one emerald green with long, flowing sleeves and a deep neckline. Hugo had decided instantly that he preferred this over the t-shirt from this afternoon.

In deference to the occasion, he'd put on a button-down shirt in a royal blue, which Glenna had told him brought out his eyes. There had been approval in her voice, and he thought he'd caught her looking him up and down when she thought he wasn't watching her.

This was quite the happy development in his evening, so Hugo was in a cheerful mood as they walked into the pub.

Standing at the bar were the three Potters, along with Navya and Hob, and Fred with his date Rosina. Rosina was, as promised, very pretty, with long blonde hair that curled at the ends and wide brown eyes.

“Where's your date, Albus?” Hugo couldn't resist asking as he and Glenna joined them.

“Imaginary,” said James.

“Bugger off,” said Albus.

“You lot, this is Glenna Griffiths.” Hugo indicated Glenna, who waved at the group, then he pointed out each of them in turn.

Once everyone had said hello, Fred gave him a nudge in the ribs with one elbow.

“I thought you were bringing that Healer who hates everyone,” he stage-whispered.

“That's my cousin,” Glenna told him with that wide, friendly smile Hugo found so enchanting. “She's sick with dragon pox so I'm filling in.”

Albus was leaning against the bar with a pint of beer in one hand, examining Glenna. He turned to Hugo. “No offense, old man, but you've utterly failed in your mission with this one.”

Hugo rolled his eyes, but before he could explain Albus's quip so Glenna wouldn't be offended, she was already responding.

“I can be rude too! Don't count me out yet. I just won't be as obvious as Gwen would have.”

“She's quick,” said Lily. “What are you drinking, Glenna?”

Within half an hour, the pub was virtually filled with Weasleys. Everywhere Hugo looked, someone with red hair was in eyesight. He hadn't seen his sister yet, and was starting to think she was deliberately hiding from everyone else. Scorpius was likewise nowhere to be seen. He hoped they'd make an appearance at some point, because he wanted his sister to meet Glenna.

Glenna had by now met nearly all his cousins, with the notable exception of Louis. So far, Hugo hadn't caught sight of his most infamous cousin. Louis almost always caused an uproar in some way everywhere he went, so Hugo felt certain that when Louis did turn up, it would be obvious. He was debating the merits of spiriting Glenna away before then, just in case she did want to run off with Louis. Women often did.

“So where's Louis?” she asked then, as if she'd overheard his thoughts. “Now you've told me all those stories about him, I want to see if he lives up to the hype.”

“He'll turn up eventually,” Hugo told her. “Unless he got an early start on the evening and is already in jail somewhere.”

“Time to move!” roared James Potter from the bar, and there was a sudden mass exodus of redheads toward the exit.

“Ooh, the crawl begins,” Glenna said with a laugh, putting her hand on Hugo's shoulder to keep close behind him as they made their way through the crowd. He liked the feeling of her hand on him very much, and reached up to keep it there even as they walked down the street.

The next pub was larger than the first, and the Weasleys were able to spread out more. Victoire took over an upholstered chair near the fireplace and dispatched Teddy to bring her a snack. Hugo and Glenna were headed her way with drinks in hand when they ran into the bride herself.

“Oh, good evening,” Dominique said in that determinedly cordial voice she did when she was trying to turn up extra posh. Since Hugo was a relative and she didn't generally go to that much effort for her cousins, Hugo reckoned the voice was for Glenna's benefit. Dominique was holding a glass of red wine that was nearly empty. He hadn't seen her drunk since her divorce, and wondered if she was feeling some pre-wedding jitters.

He didn't mention any of that, of course, since she would only deny it. Instead he introduced her to Glenna, who hadn't officially met the bride just yet. “Hi Dommie. This is Glenna Griffiths. Glenna, my cousin Dominique Weasley.”

Glenna didn't miss a beat, and held out a hand. “Congratulations on your wedding tomorrow. I hope you and your husband will enjoy all the happiness you deserve.”

Hugo pressed his lips together to hold back the urge to laugh. That had sounded a bit passive-aggressive given what he'd told her about Dominique.

Dominique, of course, didn't notice a thing. “Thank you. How lovely. How long have you two been dating?” she added delicately, gesturing with her wine glass.

“Not long,” Glenna answered before Hugo could. “It's still very new. How long have you and the groom been together?”

“Oh, about a year.”

“Oi, you lot,” came Teddy Lupin's voice behind them. He sidled up in between them with a plate of chips smothered in onions and curry ketchup in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, then offered Dominique the glass of wine. “Heave to, it's so crowded I can hardly even bring the wife her food. Bloody Weasleys everywhere. Dommie, keep drinking, you'll feel better.” He took her nearly-empty glass out of her other hand, set it on a nearby table, and then pushed through to his wife, handing her the plate. Victoire balanced it on the round bump of her belly, holding it steady with one hand while she started on the chips.

“Seen Louis yet?” Hugo asked Dominique.

She let out a small sigh, looking down at her fresh wine glass. It was full nearly to the brim. “Not yet. He said he'd catch us up tonight though. James gave him the list of pubs so he could find us.”

He wondered if she'd hoped to avoid her brother. “And Reinolt, I assume he's here somewhere?”

Dominique pointed at the bar, where Hugo now saw her baron was talking to Lucy and Hilarion. Those two were probably approved companions in Dommie's view, he thought ruefully. Lucy could, of all Weasleys, be trusted to be kind and civil even in a pub crawl. And Hilarion was nicely famous enough to show off Dominique's connections.

“And does he know?” Hugo tried to think how to put it delicately. “About your brother's, erm, history?”

She shot him a look, then glanced meaningfully at Glenna, obviously wanting him to shut up in front of a new person.

“I told her a few stories,” he admitted. “She liked the one about the car boot.”

“Hugo!”

“Well, Teddy Lupin was bound to tell her at least that one,” Hugo said in his own defense. “He tells everyone that story. And the bullet to the arse story too.”

“Oh, that one sounds fun,” Glenna said brightly. “I can't believe you skipped it. Do tell.”

“Oh God,” moaned Dominique, taking a gulp of her wine. “I'd better go.” And she darted off toward the bar and her fiance, leaving Hugo and Glenna grinning in her wake.

“I'm having a lovely time,” Glenna told Hugo. “When does the rest of the entertainment arrive?”

He chuckled. “At least you can see the humor in it and not run away screaming.”

His cousin Roxanne appeared beside them before Glenna could respond.

“Is Lily seriously dating that idiot friend of James and Fred's?” Roxanne asked without preamble, her face incredulous as she waved toward Lily, who was at the bar with Hob beside her, neither of them paying each other the slightest attention. “Isn't he the one that jumped off the roof at Uncle Harry's and broke his leg?”

“Yeah, that was him.” Hugo then added, glancing at his date, “Drunk as a lord at the time.”

Glenna nodded, eyes twinkling. “Of course.”

Hugo turned his attention back to his cousin. “She only brought him so she wouldn't be alone at the wedding, cause Dommie said something rude about her going stag. Fred set them up.”

Roxanne looked highly insulted. “She asked Fred for a setup? Why didn't she ask me? Freddie. Honestly. I mean, he's my brother and I love him, but was she on drugs at the time?”

“Single people like to ask other single people to set them up, not married folks,” Glenna put in.

“Hmm.” Roxanne regarded Glenna for a moment, then turned to Hugo. “I like her.”

“Me too,” he agreed.

“I'm going to go get some chips,” Roxanne announced. “Glenna, you want anything to drink?”

She shook her head and pointed at her nearly full glass. Roxanne trotted off to the bar and Hugo chuckled.

“You've got the Roxy stamp of approval.”

“Oh good,” Glenna chuckled. “I like her too. I've noticed that when your relatives like someone, they ply them with alcohol.”

“We ply each other with alcohol too. And ourselves.” Hugo saluted her with his pint.

“Next pub!” shouted Albus, waving both arms over his head to get everyone's attention. “Weasleys, march!”

Lily lost track of Hob somewhere on the way to the fourth pub that evening. He was probably around somewhere, possibly with James or Fred, but she found she lacked enough interest to track him down and spend any time with him.

There was just no attraction between them. He might as well have been one of her brothers. For all the attention her was giving her, he practically was one of her brothers.

Lily glanced around the room for someone else to hang with. Her brothers and Fred were playing darts, each with a pint in hand. Navya was by James's side, probably to keep him from his usual alcohol-induced mayhem. James's sense of humor leaned toward the puerile. Fred's date seemed to have buggered off somewhere, and Albus of course was flying solo as always. She was starting to wonder if James was right and his date was imaginary.

She spotted her two pregnant cousins, Victoire and Roxanne, over near the fireplace, and their husbands standing nearby and chatting over glasses of whiskey. Victoire and Roxanne were splitting a plate of chips. Victoire was dipping them in vinegar, Roxanne in soy sauce. Lily wrinkled her nose at them. Disgusting. Victoire had doused most of her food in vinegar when she'd been pregnant with Dora as well. But the four of them looked so cozy together, the two pregnant mums with their husbands close at hand to fetch them more disgusting food whenever they liked.

Lily looked round at the rest of the room, not liking the feeling that was settling in her stomach. Everyone was paired off, she realized. Molly and Fitz, Lucy and Hilarion, Roxanne and Perry, James and Navya, Victoire and Teddy, Dominique and her baron. Rose wasn't there, but she was half a pair as well. Hugo had clearly paired off with Glenna; they were standing by the bar and chatting animatedly. Hugo seemed unable to take his eyes off her, which seemed vastly unfair to Lily, since her own date was so very boring.

It was only Albus and Louis still solo, she realized. She would be lumped in with them. And Fred, too, since he never stayed in a relationship long enough to introduce any of them to his mother. He might have a date this weekend, but it wasn't really being paired up. Albus never dated. And Louis was, of course, Louis.

“Oh my God,” she muttered aloud, taking a long drink. She couldn't have gotten as bad as Fred and Louis, could she? Was she doomed to be the eccentric auntie who owned seven cats? Or worse, thought her dog was her child and trotted it round the neighborhood in a baby stroller?

“What's wrong, Lily?” asked a voice beside her, and she turned in her seat to find Lucy hovering at her elbow.

“I'm having an existential crisis,” she told her cousin.

Lucy blinked. “In a pub?”

“I'm going to die alone,” Lily said dourly.

“Don't you have a date?” Lucy glanced round. “Oh there he is, over in the corner with Fred's date. Do they know each other?”

“I have no idea.” Lily didn't bother to look for him. Hob wasn't the one to save her from a sad future of excessive cats, or dogs in clothes, so who cared where he was?

“Hilarion asked me to bring him another rosé,” Lucy remarked, indicating an empty wine glass on the bartop. “The poor dear, he does get a little worried when Fitz corners him to talk shop.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Lily spotted Lucy's husband off down the end of the bar with Molly, Fitz, and Reinolt. Fitz appeared to be doing most of the talking, and Hilarion was only nodding occasionally. Lily was privately of the opinion that Lucy's husband had been so gifted with good looks and Quidditch skill that nothing had been left for him in the brains department. But Lucy loved him, and he was devoted to her, so she kept that thought to herself.

At least Lucy had someone to love her, Lily thought, disgruntled. It was more than she had.

“Reinolt's been hanging round you two a lot,” Lily noted.

“Oh yes,” said Lucy vaguely. “We like him. And Dominique said he really enjoyed our company at the dinner party.”

Dominique had undoubtedly said that to make sure Lucy stuck by her baron, so he wasn't overwhelmed by Weasleys. Lily thought this was probably wise considering Lucy was the least frightening of all their cousins. She also was unlikely to tell stories about Louis. She and Hilarion were quiet souls who would make the sort of impression on Reinolt that Dominique would want.

Molly and Fitz, on the other hand, were probably not making the sort of impression Dominique would want. Molly was smart and classy, it was true, and had even regrown her hair into shoulder-length waves in her natural color in deference to Dommie's sensibilities, but she was dressed in a black leather miniskirt and sky-high stilettos, with an open-back black top that showed off the large geometric tattoo sprawling across her back. None of that met with Dominique's approval. Fitz, on the other hand, was smart but not classy. Molly often remarked that the word “goddamn” was ninety percent of his vocabulary. He was also even more obsessed with Quidditch than Molly was and had likely been talking Reinolt's ear off about the upcoming season for his team.

Reinolt didn't look frightened off yet, though. If anything, the dark-haired baron seemed to be enjoying himself, dressed in navy slacks and a cream-colored sweater. Late-night beard stubble showed along his chiseled jaw. He was handsome, Lily thought dispassionately. No wonder Dominique liked him. He'd met all her embarrassing relatives without batting an eye, not even at James and Fred, and hopefully someone had told him at least a few Louis stories so he could be prepared.

She'd seen Teddy Lupin hanging round his future brother-in-law earlier. Surely he must have at least told the car boot story; it was one of Teddy's favorites.

Well, whatever Reinolt had heard or not, it was too late now, because Louis finally turned up.

Louis in bars and pubs was always dangerous. It was where so many of the worst Louis stories started out, in fact. A pub, a woman, and next thing you knew someone was going to jail and Louis was moping about being in love.

Dominique collected her brother as soon as he walked in the door and stuck by him like glue while Louis looked annoyed at her for holding his arm. Unfortunately for Dominique's sense of public decorum, the stress of the evening had finally got to her. It wasn't long after Louis's arrival that Dominique went over that fine line between tipsy and drunk, and began to cry in the middle of the pub.

“I love you,” she was telling Roxanne when Lily arrived beside them, eager to see what completely sodden Dominique would do. She didn't recall seeing Dominique drunk since her divorce, when she'd stayed at Victoire's house for several weeks drinking boxed red wine by the gallon.

“I know.” Roxanne patted her shoulder awkwardly.

“I'm so glad you're all here for the wedding.” She blew her nose in a cocktail napkin.

Louis, uncharacteristically quiet, took a glance around, realized his sister had stopped paying him any attention, and slid away. Dominique didn't notice a thing.

“I love you, Lily,” she sobbed, hugging Lily next.

Lily grimaced at Roxanne over Dominique's shoulder. Roxanne rolled her eyes.

“I love you too, Dommie.”

“If you love us all, why have you been such a roaring bitch?” asked Victoire from the other side of Roxanne.

Lily snickered as Dominique released her and staggered over to hug her sister.

“I love you, Victoire. You smell like vinegar, did you know?”

“You ought to apologize to Rose, you know,” Victoire grumbled, hugging her sister back.

Dominique looked around as if only just realizing that Rose hadn't shown up. “She's not here.”

“She'll forget this entirely when she's sober,” murmured Roxanne.

“Shame,” said Lily. This seemed like something Dominique ought to remember later.

Dommie had already forgotten Rose and moved on to profess her love to Molly, who looked extremely startled by this and glanced around as if someone might save her if she could just catch their eye.

Victoire, however, was no longer paying attention to her drunken sister. “Oh bugger, we've lost Louis.” She put her hands on her hips as she scanned the pub. Victoire was quite short, so Lily wasn't sure she could really see much. Frowning, Victoire darted away to find her brother.

Dominique caught sight of her fiance approaching and promptly burst into a fresh wave of tears.

“Oh lord,” Molly said, drawing back in alarm. Molly had never been one for open displays of emotions.

Fitz chose that moment to walk up behind her, took in Dominique sobbing and, without missing a beat, hooked a sharp turn and walked off.

Molly managed to extricate herself from Dominique's arms and hurried after him, mumbling, “Wait for me, dammit...” while Dominique transferred her drunken hugs to her baron.

“I'm so sorry,” Dominique was sobbing, her face buried in Reinolt's sweater. He was bound to have mascara all over the light colored knit, Lily thought, no matter how waterproof that makeup was. “It's all going to go sideways now. I shouldn't have had that third glass of wine-”

“Oh, she's had at least twice that,” Roxanne said in an undertone, making Lily grin.

Dominique wasn't done, though, still mumbling incoherently against her fiance while he stroked her perfect red-gold hair. “And now we've lost him – I don't know what he'll do – you won't want to be with me when you see-”

“Darling, nothing could make me want to leave you,” Reinolt said soothingly. “Don't worry about Louis, I promise he can't do anything to scare me away. You know I've relatives that can get troublesome as well. You remember what I told you about my cousin Rupert and the gerbil?”

“Ooh, what happened with cousin Rupert and the gerbil?” Roxanne asked eagerly, her fingers twitching as if she were eager to write everything down.

“I think we can guess,” said Lily.

Reinolt gave them a rueful smile over the top of Dominique's head. “You don't have to, it was all over the newspapers.”

“Has anyone told you the one about Louis and the car boot?” Lily asked, just to make sure he really understood.

“Ah yes, I know this story. I prefer the one of Louis getting thrown in the river.” Reinolt patted Dominique's head as she burst into fresh sobs at this, but he was still smiling.

“Unusual. Typically Louis getting shot in the arse is the favorite,” Roxanne mused. “Followed closely by the one about the car boot.”

“Those are fine tales,” agreed Reinolt. “But the river is funniest. With a fish in his pocket when the authorities pulled him out.”

Roxanne broke into giggles and gave the baron a pat on the shoulder. “Oh, you'll do.”

Dominique let out a wail and wrapped her arms around Reinolt's neck, getting his full attention again.

“I'll go see if I can find Louis, then, shall I?” Lily jabbed a thumb over one shoulder and made good her escape.

Maybe the baron would last after all, she mused as she walked round the pub, hoping to catch sight of either Victoire or Louis. She hadn't thought about it much, but she supposed she had assumed that anyone would mostly be interested in Dominique because she was thin, pretty, and a good hostess. She had all the major qualifications of a baroness except the aristocratic background, by her own design. Looking at the baron with her now, though, Lily realized he really did love her – and he was more than the blank slate Lily had been imagining him. Cousin Rupert and the gerbil, hah.

“And who was that?”

Recognizing that scolding voice at once, Lily veered off and found Victoire standing near the door with a firm grip on her brother's ear. Louis was leaning toward her, looking more pained than embarrassed, since he had no shame whatsoever.

“I don't know, Victoire, she came up to me-”

“You have one job tonight, and that's to behave yourself. I don't want to see a repeat of what happened at Lucy's wedding when Mum caught you naked in the coat closet with that witch-”

“There's no coat closet here-”

She gave him a little shake, and Louis cried out, “Ow, dammit!”

“Sit quietly and have a drink and don't do anything tonight. Don't talk to anyone, don't buy a drink for anyone, and for God's sake keep your clothes on. Got it?” She let him go abruptly.

Louis straightened up, rubbing his ear. “That really hurt, Victoire-”

“Good. Remember that when you start thinking you're in love.”

Lily watched Louis sidle away, still rubbing at his ear. It was bright red under the pale strawberry-blonde of his hair. Victoire put her hands on her hips and turned to see Lily watching.

“It probably won't do any good, I know,” she said with a sigh.

“You had to try it,” Lily offered.

“Come on, let's go get a drink. If I can't have one, you can drink some whiskey for me and let me smell it.”

*

They managed to make it another half an hour in that pub before it all went to hell. Lily was sitting at the bar helping Victoire pour coffee into Dominique so she was sober enough to go onwards with the pub crawl, when a cat-like screech came from down the other end of the bar.

“Oh no,” moaned Dominique. She waved at the bartender. “Put some whiskey in this coffee, I don't want to be sober after all. Oh God, I'm going to throw up.”

“That'll be Louis, then,” Victoire said unnecessarily. She gestured to Lily. “Go see what you can do, I'll be there shortly. Time to woman up, Dommie. Drink that coffee and get your wand.”

It was, of course, Louis, though he wasn't the one making the screeches. That, to Lily's complete lack of surprise, was a woman. She was blonde and tall and thin, and she looked very angry with Louis. Fitz was at the bar, sitting by himself with a glass of whiskey in one hand and the look of a man who'd finally got a front-row seat to a sold-out show.

“What's going on?” she asked him.

Fitz indicated the woman with his whiskey. “Well, Louis was buying a round and asked if she'd like a drink. She said yes, but then he introduced himself and asked what her name was, and then this started. I don't know what's going on, but my guess is he slept with her flatmate or her sister.”

“I didn't know Louis had been to Amsterdam before,” Lily said in surprise.

“Oh, he's probably slept with half of magical Europe by now, but she didn't sound Dutch. West Country of some sort. Oh, here we go.”

Lily pulled a face as the woman took a swing at Louis, and he ducked away.

“Ah, fist fights. Now I feel right at home,” Fitz announced, sipping his whiskey.

“Oi!” called Louis, still ducking as she kept swinging at him. The rest of the family was turning up now to see what was going on, most of them shaking their heads. No one looked surprised, of course. James appeared beside Lily, consternation on his face.

“Does he know her?” he asked, directing this at Lily, then to Louis himself, “Do you know her?”

“I've never seen her before!” Louis exclaimed.

This was evidently the wrong answer, because the woman's eyes went wide with rage and she screeched, “You have GOT to be joking!”

“What's going on?” Reinolt strode over swiftly. “Good lord, Louis, do you know this woman?”

Louis was holding his arms over his head to protect himself from concussion. “How many times do I have to say it?!”

“One more, you bastard!” screamed the woman, swinging her purse at him again.

“Have you got bricks in there, you daft bint?” Louis made as if to run away, but she blocked him and swung wildly for his head.

“Oh, hang on there-” Reinolt put a hand out and snatched the purse strap from her.

“Help! Thief!” she shrieked, gone completely red in the face now, but she was still going after Louis. Slapping at him with one hand, she hopped on one foot and struggled to take off her shoe with the other.

“Has anyone got a camera?” James asked in amusement. “I can't believe Rose is missing this.”

“James,” Navya murmured from the other side of Fitz, censure in her voice, but she was watching avidly herself.

Lily shook her head, but before she could decide whether to risk being hit by a steel-tipped heel to intervene, Louis's sisters arrived.

Dominique was still bleary-eyed but looked better for the two cups of coffee she'd had. She and Victoire pushed past the other Weasleys and stood in front of Louis, forming a protective wall in front of their little brother.

“It's not my fault,” Louis began, cowering behind them, but Victoire shushed him.

“That's Rose's line,” Lily heard someone say, and turned to find Hugo grinning at Louis with Glenna beside him. She too looked to be enjoying herself immensely. Hob, on the other hand, had buggered off who knew where to avoid the scene. Lily couldn't spot him anywhere.

One of James's friends ought to be able to handle a small Louis scene, she thought disparagingly.

“Go away,” Victoire was telling the woman in a commanding voice. “You're not wanted here. Leave him alone.”

The blonde made as if to slap Victoire, and everyone seemed to freeze. Molly was closest and grabbed the woman's wrist before she made contact.

“You don't hit a pregnant woman,” Molly said, her voice practically dripping with ice.

The woman gave Molly a shove, knocking her back into Fitz. He caught Molly's shoulders and pushed her back upright immediately, launching her at the woman. The other Weasleys seemed to surge forward and Lily only caught glimpses of whatever happened next. Both Molly and Dominique got in a blow, and Teddy jumped forward with both arms spread protectively around his wife, guarding her belly while Victoire tried to reach around him to get at her opponent. The next thing Lily knew, the woman – whoever she'd been – had snatched her purse back from Reinolt and run out the front door. The crowd seemed to instantly deflate as the door closed behind her.

The bar owner, red-faced, came up beside Lily, gesturing wildly and speaking in rapid Dutch to Reinolt. The baron had his wallet in hand, ready to buy their way out of the latest Louis incident.

Realizing the battle was won, the Weasleys collectively quieted down, catching their breaths.

After a moment, Albus called out, “Next pub!” and with a roar, they all moved toward the door.


	8. Punch Drunk

Hugo's capacity for alcohol was not quite on the level of the professional Quidditch players under his care in the League, but he felt he had acquitted himself well in the pub crawl. He wasn't blind drunk, or even technically stumbling, and he had mostly kept up with both Fitz and Molly, not to mention his cousins, no slouches in the alcohol capacity themselves. They had been through seven pubs that evening, because as James had pointed out, seven was the most powerful magical number and therefore would be good luck for the wedding.

Glenna hadn't bothered to match drinks after the fourth pub, so she wasn't stumbling either. She was instead doing a little salsa step as they walked along. The last bar they had been to had been playing Latin dance music. Hugo was enjoying watching her, and kept lagging behind so he had a better view of her hips as they swayed through the night air to the memory of the music.

“That was wonderful,” she chirped, giving a little spin on one foot. “I can't remember the last time I had so much fun.”

“And no one was arrested,” Hugo put in cheerfully.

“Your cousins are _hilarious_ ,” she added, drawing the last word out.

“I think they liked you too.”

She gave another twirl and then turned around, still doing her salsa dance, moving backward now. She held out both hands to him, beckoning, hips swaying. “Come and dance with me.”

Hugo wrapped an arm around her waist and did his best to keep up. Dancing was not exactly his best skill, but after a few minutes of twirling around with her held tightly against him, their tempo slowed and Glenna slid away.

“It's so late, I know I should want to get some sleep, but I don't think I'm ready for bed yet. Want to grab a bite?”

Grabbing a bite to eat was almost always on Hugo's agenda, but right now anything that would prolong the evening sounded good to him. “Any time. Not sure where we'll find anything at this hour. It's going on three in the morning.”

Eventually they located a dessert shop that was just closing up, and Glenna managed to talk the sleepy-looking shopgirl into two cups of coffee and a pint of ice cream. With provisions in hand, they returned to the hotel and made their way to Glenna's room. Hugo took a quick look around while Glenna set the ice cream on the tiny little table in the room and pulled her wand from her pocket to cast a quick warming charm on the coffee cups.

She hadn't unpacked much. Hugo took in the dark pink dress hanging in the small wardrobe, a pair of matching pink heels tossed haphazardly at the bottom of the wardrobe beside her dragonhide travel bag. There was a purple striped makeup bag sitting on the bedside table. The navy blue shirt she'd worn earlier in the day was tossed on the bedspread.

They sat across from each other, the table so small that their knees were touching under the well-worn wood. The ice cream she'd chosen for them was chocolate, which went quite well with the bittersweet coffee.

“Can I ask you something?” Hugo asked as he dug into the ice cream.

She raised her eyebrows at him, mouth full, and made an inquiring noise.

“When you said you were single – extremely so, I think you put it-”

Glenna swallowed quickly. “That's a long story.”

He glanced into the pint. “We've barely made a dent in the ice cream yet. Plenty of time.”

She grabbed her coffee and took a sip, obviously wishing for a delay. Hugo thought better of having asked the question, wishing he hadn't pushed her when he'd only just met her.

“Look, if you really don't want to talk about it- I shouldn't have brought it up, it's none of my business really-”

“No, it's all right.” Glenna cocked her head as she looked at him, but apparently whatever she was seeing in him made her decide to trust him with the story. “The short version is that I had a boyfriend for a few years, owned a house together, holidays with each other's families and all that, very serious, and one day I came home and found him with someone else.”

“I'm sorry.” That seemed inadequate for a proper reaction, but since he couldn't very well go and punch her ex-boyfriend in the nose, he pulled a face instead. “What a bastard he must've been.”

She blew out a sigh and gave him a half-hearted smile. “And I haven't managed to date anyone since then. I try, but I break it off because I feel like I can't trust men not to be cheating bastards. So that's my failure. How about you? Tell me yours.”

“I've never been in a relationship for longer than three months,” he admitted.

Her eyebrows went up. “What, never?”

“It sounds bad. I just... never wanted anything permanent.”

“Did you tell any of them that you did?” she demanded, scooping into the ice cream but glancing up to keep eye contact as she did so.

“No. Of course not. Does that actually make it any better?”

“Well, at least you were honest about it.” Glenna shrugged. “Honest is important. Do you want something permanent now or are you still in three months or less mode?”

“Most of them were about half that.” Full disclosure seemed necessary. He didn't explore his feelings on why that felt so certain, but he wasn't going to fudge the truth. “But no one in the last four or five months. I realized I was tired of it. You met my cousin Molly tonight.”

She didn't ask where he was going with the non sequitur. “With the tattoo. Yes.”

“That's her. Thanks to my job, I see her pretty regularly, and watching her and Fitz made me realize that I wanted something like that. You saw them together tonight.”

“I did,” Glenna said thoughtfully. “They certainly seemed to be in love. Especially by the fifth pub, when your other cousin had to pull them out of a dark corner.”

Lucy had fetched her sister out of a corner that hadn't been dark enough for what Molly and Fitz were up to by that point. Hugo snorted. “Well, they're like that all the time, including the dark corners.”

“So you changed your mind about what you wanted in love because of them?”

Hugo considered this, watching the ice cream drip from his spoon into his cup of coffee. “Let's say... I was already changing my mind, and seeing Molly find someone who matched her so well made me realize I wanted the same thing. Forever, not just for three months.”

When he looked up, Glenna was looking at him intently, as if she were evaluating whether or not to believe him. He wondered if he sounded as sincere as he felt about it.

 _You just met her_ , he told himself sternly. _Shut up about all this or you'll sound like a prat and scare her away_.

“We ought to drink some water,” he said, changing the subject. “Stave off the hangover tomorrow.”

“We can just get some Hangover-Curing Potion.” She shrugged and ate another spoonful of ice cream.

“True, but it hardly seems the responsible, adult thing to do.” He kept his tone light, hoping the heavier topics hadn't ruined the evening for her.

“I'm tired of being an adult,” Glenna announced, waving the spoon at him. “Being a grown-up is awful. I'd like to quit now.”

“Being a grown-up's not all bad. After all,” Hugo felt compelled to point out, “it's three in the morning and we're eating ice cream and drinking coffee, and no one is telling us how we ought to go to bed.”

“That's true,” she agreed. “No one to say how we'll regret this in the morning when the caffeine and sugar keep us up until dawn and then we miss half the wedding.”

“In fairness, my mother won't hesitate to say something if I miss half the wedding. I'm never fully a grown-up to her.”

“Ah, well. Mothers.” Glenna scooped more ice cream into her mouth.

“But on the bright side, my sister is bound to do something to distract her, and if all else fails, Louis is going to be there.” Hugo cheered up at this thought and dove back into the ice cream with Glenna, his spoon clacking against hers as he scooped up another bite.

“Your cousin Louis was a treat. The bar brawl was everything I was expecting of him from what you told me.”

Hugo rolled his eyes. “That was actually sort of mild as Louis incidents go. He's something else, I swear. Women go mental for him, it's the weirdest thing. His mum, my aunt Fleur, her grandmother was a veela. We've always assumed he got some sort of veela genetics there that Victoire and Dominique missed out on. He's a good-looking bloke, but they just lose their minds around him. You wouldn't believe some of the stories.”

“You're not worried I'll lose my mind for him and ditch you?”

That was always a bit of a concern, if Hugo was being truthful, but she didn't look serious about the question, so he took it as an opportunity to tease her back. “You don't appear to have any sort of personality disorder, so I expect you'll be able to resist the attraction.”

Glenna laughed. “Only crazy women fancy him?”

“All women seem to fancy him, but the crazy ones are unable to resist.”

Glenna nodded judiciously and took a sip of her coffee. “Only women? Or blokes too?”

“Probably blokes as well, but Louis is decidedly hetero, so even if they can't resist him, he can resist them.”

“I used to wish I was a lesbian,” Glenna said unexpectedly, twirling her spoon between her fingers, her eyes fixed on it. “Seemed like it would be so much easier if I could be attracted to women instead, since I know loads of perfectly wonderful single women. But then I had a flatmate who was a lesbian, and it turns out it's just as hard to find someone when you fancy girls as it is when you fancy boys.”

“My cousin Albus doesn't fancy anyone,” Hugo offered, not entirely sure how to respond to that. “I expect that's probably easiest, on the whole.”

“Probably it's me,” Glenna went on, almost as if she couldn't stop herself from saying it. “I can't seem to keep them around. I think I'm missing something inside, and now after Jasper, I'm so suspicious and I can't trust them. I think I'm broken.”

“It's not you,” Hugo said swiftly. “You're lovely.”

“You're only saying that because you're still drunk.”

“I'm perfectly sober.” He lifted his coffee mug to her.

“Punch-drunk. It's late.”

“I'm a Healer. I'm used to working odd hours.”

She was blinking at him owlishly, out of excuses now.

“You're lovely,” Hugo repeated emphatically. “You are.”

She leaned toward him, and he was suddenly aware that he was leaning toward her. Her lips found his, and Hugo knocked over his coffee cup in his hurry to get her in his arms. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and then found their way into his hair, and when she gave a tug, he wrapped one arm around her waist and the other around her thighs and lifted her. It only took two steps in the tiny hotel room before they were tumbling down onto the bed.

Hugo lost track of all conscious thought as they both shucked off their clothes, reveling in the feel of Glenna kissing him, of her curvy body under his hands, until she suddenly rolled on top of him and his conscience kicked him sharply.

“Wait, wait,” Hugo gasped, and Glenna sat up, straddling him and looking incredulous.

“Seriously? _Wait_?”

His hands slid over her hips, unable to resist her skin. “Just... I just want you to be sure. Do we really want to jump into this?”

“I can't believe you said wait.” Glenna leaned back down, so her hair draped around his head in a curtain of black silk in the dim light of the room. “I'd like to jump into this. That's why I'm jumping your bones. Do you really want me to stop?”

Absolutely not. He would happily spend every moment with her on top of him. “God, no. Never.”

“Well then, shut up.” She kissed him, and Hugo shut up.

*

Hugo lay on his back, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling. Glenna had one leg flung over him, lying on her stomach with every limb stretched out on the bed. She could just see him out of the corner of her eye, but her hair had got all tangled across her face and was blocking her view.

“Shouldn't we be falling asleep right about now?” she mumbled.

“I blame the coffee,” Hugo said, and rolled to face her. “We really will be up all night.”

“My mother always told me that would happen.” She pushed her hair off her face and propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at him. He looked utterly satisfied, and she was immensely proud to have put that expression on his face. He was so very sweet and sexy, and he hadn't been worried by her history with her ex. Instead he'd reassured her. Twice. “Hugo.”

“Yes?” He ran one hand down her leg from hip to knee, repositioning it around his own hip.

“I want you to know something.”

“You never do this sort of thing?” he asked, his tone lightly teasing.

“Oh, who cares about that?” She took a deep breath and confessed, “I'm a horrible slob.”

“Are you?”

“Oh yes. I leave my clothes all around the floor and never do the washing-up until it's filled the sink.”

“I like to wake up at dawn,” he admitted.

Glenna's eyes widened. “No.”

“And I'm cheerful about it, too.”

“God. Tell me something else horrible about you.” She tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, snuggling closer to him.

“I lie to my parents about how much I know about what my sister does.”

“That's pretty good. I don't call my mother even when I know I should.”

“I'm terrible about keeping in touch with friends. Hardly have anyone that I talk to who isn't a relative.”

“I shout at people when I drive because I think most of the world is populated by morons. I call everyone a stupid wanker on the M4.”

Hugo hooked one hand under her knee, hiking her leg higher up on his hip. “If you're trying to convince me I shouldn't fancy you, you should have led with the bad qualities instead of the sex.”

She pretended to look thoughtful. “I did it backward, is that what you're saying?”

“You know what you really should have led with,” Hugo murmured.

“Hmm?”

“You share the same DNA as Gwyneira.”

Glenna laughed. “You already knew that and you got naked with me anyway.”

“Yeah. And you met my cousins and still got naked with me, too.”

“They're not that bad!”

“You haven't met my sister yet.”

She smiled at that and pulled him closer, giving a little wiggle as she settled her head on his shoulder. “What about after the wedding? Did I frighten you off enough that you won't want to see me?”

“You can't scare me that easily, I'm a Weasley,” he told her. “You're not rid of me yet. When we get back to England, I'll Floo you.”

Normally she wouldn't have believed a man who said he'd Floo in this sort of circumstance – they'd just met earlier that afternoon and already jumped in bed together, after all – but she did believe Hugo. She wasn't sure why, just that she felt in her bones that he was telling the truth. She decided to go with her gut instinct, and believed in him. “All right.”

“Where do you live, anyway?”

“Birmingham. You're probably in London with the hospital, aren't you?”

He shook his head. “Not any more. I'm in the League Healer division out of Edinburgh. I work a lot of weekends thanks to the League schedule, at least during the Quidditch season.”

“I work from home, I can set my schedule. Do you work on-call hours too?”

“Rotating shifts of it. There are nearly as many injuries during training for some of the teams. Especially Falmouth,” he added with a grin.

“So,” she said in a slow drawl, “what you're saying here is we'll have to work around each other's schedules if we want to continue seeing each other.”

“I'll make time if you will,” Hugo said quite seriously.

She lifted her head to see his face better, and once again the feeling crept over her that she could trust Hugo Weasley. She hadn't really wanted to take a chance on any blokes after Jasper, but it didn't feel like taking a chance. It felt like a sound decision, actually. “I think this is worth making the time for. Let's see where we go, hmm?”

He grinned and kissed her soundly. “I'm game for that.”

*

They stayed up until dawn, talking and cuddling. Hugo hadn't had an all-nighter since his days as a Trainee Healer at St. Mungo's Hospital. He knew he was going to pay for it later when he yawned all through the ceremony and his mother killed him stone dead, but he couldn't bring himself to stop touching her and talking to her. Her laugh and the sparkle in her eyes that said he was making her happy tonight kept him going far past the time his brain started putting in urgent requests to go to sleep.

He'd known her less than twenty-four hours, but it felt like she'd always been there beside him. He didn't understand how it could feel brand new and the ease of years at the same time.

The sun was just creeping over the horizon, light beginning to spill out over the darkened city. Hugo lay beside Glenna, both curled up to face each other. He felt he was absorbing her presence, still and quiet in the dark room, and wondered idly if she was feeling the same. She was watching him with a tiny smile at the edges of her lips, one hand tucked against his collarbone, her fingers curled gently.

“You know what I keep thinking?” he asked in a murmur.

“Hmm?” Her eyes were wide and fathomless, black pools in the growing dawn light.

“We nearly didn't meet. I almost canceled on Gwen, then she got sick, and I just... I keep thinking how I nearly missed you.”

“Yeah.” She scooted even closer, close enough to kiss, but he only draped an arm around her waist and breathed her in. “I nearly missed you too. Missed this.”

He was silent for a few moments, just watching her, their eyes locked together. “I'm glad we didn't.”

“Me too. Why were you going to cancel?”

“Oh, pity for Dominique almost got the better of me.”

Glenna's lips curved into a smile. “You really are kind-hearted. Did she say something to change your mind?”

He nodded. “About my sister.”

“I really need to meet your sister,” Glenna remarked.

“I would go round right now and wake her so you could, but she's not much of a morning person.”

Rose considered mornings to begin around noon, so she would probably kill him if he woke her at dawn. Not to mention his little nephew might wake up and be cranky, and Scorpius might kill Hugo for that.

They finally fell asleep as the sun rose fully. It seemed Hugo had only closed his eyes for a moment when he heard a chirping noise growing louder and louder.

Groggily, he rolled over and grabbed the alarm clock from the bedside table, slapping at it until the chirping stopped.

“What time is it?” Glenna asked, her voice hoarse from sleep. She rolled onto her back but didn't open her eyes.

Hugo squinted at the clock, and then felt a jolt of alarm. “Shite, it's past ten.”

“Oh God. We're going to be late.” Glenna sat up and gave him a shove. “Get up, get a shower.”

“Where's my shirt?”

He struggled into his trousers while Glenna attempted to untangle her hair. Once he'd got the essentials covered, he leaned across the bed to kiss her, enjoying the sight of her sitting on top of the bed, still completely nude, brushing her hair.

“Go get a shower, you idiot,” she said, but she kissed him back.

Grinning, Hugo grabbed the rest of his clothes and tucked them under one arm as he padded barefoot into the corridor. Outside her room, he ran into his sister immediately.

Rose was looking sleep-tousled, wearing her bathrobe and carrying a cup of coffee. She blinked at him in surprise. “Hugo? Why aren't you dressed?”

He glanced over his shoulder at Glenna's door, on the point of dragging Rose in to introduce them, but he heard the water running and thought better of this. “I was just going to get dressed.”

Rose gave his bare chest a meaningful look. “Up late, were we?”

“I had a good date,” he told her. “Why aren't you dressed?”

His sister shrugged. “I'm up before noon, surely that's enough.”

“What are you going to do to Dominique?” Hugo demanded before she could take over the conversation.

Rose assumed a look of hurt innocence. “Would I do something to Dominique?”

“Remember Dad said she'd press charges if you punch her in the jaw.”

“I would never,” Rose exclaimed. “Not at the wedding, anyway, it's too public.”

“Rose?” Scorpius stuck his head out from their room, two doors down. His blonde hair was neatly combed into a ponytail, and he was already dressed, his tie knotted in an Eldredge. “We have about ten minutes until we have to leave.”

She yawned and waved to him before turning back to Hugo. “I suppose we'd better be on time or Mum will have something to say about it. Go put a shirt on, for God's sake.”

“Brush your hair, Rosie,” he retorted with a grin.

They turned away from each other and headed to their rooms.


	9. Nice Day For a White Wedding

Mornings were not Lily's strong suit.

Mid-morning brunch, that was when she was best. Evenings were even better, really.

Unfortunately her schedule the day of the wedding called for an early breakfast in order to have time to prepare for the wedding itself. She needed several hours for the amount of primping she intended to do. This was no ordinary wedding, after all. She had no intention of deliberately following any of Dominique's guidelines, and had several small magical touches planned as well just to show her cousin up a bit more.

No smokey eye. Ha.

Hob had met her at breakfast along with Fred and his date Rosina. James and Navya were expected, but hadn't made it downstairs yet. Albus, on the other hand, would be missing breakfast as he would have to go and meet his date at the Portkeys.

“It's sad that he has to take the delusion this far,” James had stage-whispered to Navya last night when Albus had made this announcement.

Albus had promptly punched him in the shoulder.

Fred and Rosina sat together at one end of the table, and Hob sat beside Rosina to save room for James and Navya. Lily ordered coffee and waited for her brother to arrive, listening with half an ear to Fred coming on hard to Rosina. He sounded a little pathetic. She wondered if she ought to tip him off about sounding desperate, but Fred probably wouldn't listen so she tuned him out instead.

He wasn't even being creative about his come-ons. Honestly, Fred was a little embarrassing.

Halfway through her second cup of coffee, James and Navya turned up, looking flushed and happy. Obviously they hadn't been late for James's usual reasons (laziness), but for a more annoying reason. Well, annoying because Lily had no one to make her late in the mornings. Lily had a strong urge to kick her brother under the table.

“You're late,” she said instead.

James grinned at her as he sat down, then draped an arm around the back of Navya's chair. “I'm always late, Lily. Haven't you heard Mum's favorite saying?”

“I thought Navya had you under control now,” she teased him.

Navya smiled. “There's only so much I can do.”

James leaned past them to slug Fred in the shoulder. “Did you make it to your room without puking?”

Lily rolled her eyes at the two of them. “Navya, I'd love it if you could get James to stop being a prat next. The chronic lateness is slightly less annoying than the being a giant prat. You should work on that first, then the lateness.”

Navya chuckled and shook her head. “Oh, I would if I could. I don't want to change him, though. He's awfully cute the way he is.”

James was still chatting with Fred, but he gave his girlfriend a wink that made her cheeks turn pink.

They ordered breakfast, and Lily watched the Muggles out on the street, trying to keep an eye out for fashion details she might want to bring to her next purchase order. They did like their tall boots, and witches hadn't adopted that trend. She wondered if she could bring that into wizarding fashion. A lot of witches had given up on the long traditional robes and would actually be able to show off those sort of knee-high boots.

As the food arrived, she brought this up to Navya to get her opinion on it. Navya was, in Lily's expert opinion, a fashionable woman.

“I reckon the younger witches will want them, especially if you can do bright colours. I don't think I've ever worn those sorts of boots before.” Navya was watching out the window with a small frown. “They wear a lot of black and brown shoes, these Muggles.”

Lily nodded. “I was thinking green and purple, and red of course.”

“Royal blue,” suggested Navya.

“With shaped heels,” Lily said dreamily. “Purple boots with a spiral heel.”

“Talking of shoes, Lily, I'd love your advice on mine for tonight, if you wouldn't mind,” Navya said then. “I brought two pairs because I couldn't decide which looked better. I'm not sure either is quite right but I ran out of time to find the right pair.”

“You should have asked Lily last week to go shopping with you like I suggested,” James told her, buttering his toast. “She could have helped you pick out some new shoes. I said Lily is the queen of shopping for clothes and shoes.”

“He did say that,” Navya confided, “but I didn't want to impose.”

“Don't be silly, you're not imposing. I love to be a shopping wingman. You can call me anytime for that.” Lily looked at her future sister-in-law with a fond smile. Navya was in many ways far too well-mannered a woman to fit with her brother, but somehow the two of them seemed just perfect together. James needed her level-headedness and she needed his spontaneity. Their jagged edges fit together like puzzle pieces.

It was funny how it happened that way sometimes, like Rose and Scorpius, or Molly and Fitz. Finding their other half, their strengths and weaknesses complementary. Then there were Lucy and Hilarion, or Roxanne and Perry, so alike and perfectly matched, like two peas in a pod. The same interests, personality traits, two halves of a whole.

Lily didn't know which one she wanted, but she hoped someone was out there for her who could be her perfect pea in a pod, or puzzle piece. She blinked suddenly, the realization settling in.

It had never really occurred to her to want the everyday sort of love. She'd always wanted fairy tale love, the grand gestures and the epic scenes, especially with the wedding looming. She'd wanted to get the fairy tale and rub her cousin's nose in it. But her brother had found the sort of love that shared chips, and always did the chore that their partner hated to do, the kind of love that drank coffee in the morning in bathrobes without worrying about how your hair looked. Lily wanted that love too, the forever kind, the best friends and lovers kind. She wanted a love that lasted, not a happy ending but instead no end in sight.

 _Shite_ , she thought. _Where the hell am I supposed to shop for that?_

Navya hadn't noticed Lily's breakfast epiphany, however, and was cheerfully chatting about her shoes while an equally oblivious James ate sausage and toast. Lily struggled to refocus on the conversation, and glanced over at Hob.

He was leaning toward Rosina, talking in low tones, and she was smiling and leaning toward him. Fred had a sour look on his face as he drank his tea, watching them sidelong.

Lily stared at them, gobsmacked. When the hell had _that_ happened?

*

Hugo knocked on Glenna's door with only a moment to spare before they needed to be on their way. She opened it immediately, and struck a pose with one arm held aloft.

“What do you think?”

What he thought was that he wanted to throw her on the bed and tear the pink dress off her, but he settled for, “You look incredible.”

And she did. The dark pink dress hadn't looked like much on the hanger, but on Glenna it made his mouth water. He wasn't good at describing women's clothes, despite much time spent around Lily, who was the undisputed queen of fashion in their family. The dress wasn't tight but still hugged her every curve, hitting her just above the knee with a swirl of silk. Her hair was pulled up in a knot with a few sprigs of flowers tucked into the dark strands. Incredible wasn't the half of it.

“You look fantastic in that suit,” she told him. “I love a man in a suit.” She reached up to straighten his tie while Hugo made a mental note to wear a suit every time he took Glenna out.

“We better get going or we really will be late,” he told her, offering his arm to her. She slid her hand into the crook of his arm and they headed for the stairs.

“I thought about wearing a white dress,” Glenna said as they reached the lobby. “You know, in the interests of pissing off the bride. But I thought that might be too much.”

“Much as I would have enjoyed the fireworks from that, you're probably right. Would've been overkill.”

The church where Dominique was marrying her baron was enormous and looked ancient. It was packed with flowers, bunting, and other assorted wedding décor of decidedly non-magical variety. It was also packed with Muggle guests from the baron's side. They had slept a bit late for sure. Nearly everyone was seated when they arrived, and they only had time to slide into the chairs between his parents and his sister before the minister began the ceremony.

“Hi,” whispered Rose, leaning across him to shake Glenna's hand. “I'm Rose.”

“I've heard a lot about you,” Glenna whispered back. “I'm Glenna.”

“You're going to get us in trouble,” Hugo whispered to his sister.

“I haven't met her yet,” Rose whispered back. “You said you had a good date, I want to meet her.”

“Shh.” Scorpius gave the three of them a quelling look from beside Rose. He had one arm draped around the back of her chair, and he gave her arm a squeeze.

“That's Scorpius,” Rose told Glenna in a whisper. “My boyfriend. He'll probably start crying soon, he loves weddings.”

Their mother reached around Glenna and gave Hugo a little shove, since she couldn't reach Rose. “All of you, hush.”

Hugo gave his sister a dirty look, but Rose had snuggled up to Scorpius and was pretending she hadn't done anything. He turned to Glenna, who was clearly suppressing giggles. Her eyes sparkled merrily, and Hugo leaned down to give her a quick kiss.

When he looked up, he saw his mother watching him speculatively, and raised an eyebrow at her. She smiled and turned to pay attention to the ceremony.

It was even longer than Dominique's first wedding ceremony. Hugo didn't mind weddings, by and large, since the normal run of Weasley weddings tended to be boisterous affairs, though he preferred the reception to the actual wedding. Dominique, however, liked pomp and circumstance, the more elaborate the better, and Hugo's understanding of Muggle aristocracy was that they liked elaborate ceremonies just as much as Dommie did. It certainly seemed to last far longer than was absolutely necessary, in Hugo's opinion.

His mother was crying softly, since she loved weddings, and his father wrapped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. Scorpius, who also loved weddings, did get misty-eyed. Glenna seemed of the misty-eyed persuasion as well, and had slid her hand into Hugo's. He spent most of the ceremony stroking her hand and playing with her fingertips. Her nails were painted a pale pink, almost nude colored, and he found himself fascinated by the shapes and angles of her hands.

She gave his hand a squeeze, and he looked up to find his mother eyeing him again. Probably because he wasn't paying attention. Hugo sat up straighter, faking attentiveness. Glenna scooted a bit closer and rested her dark head on his shoulder, still holding tight to his hand.

Outside of his row and immediate family, the rest of the Weasleys stretched in front of him in a sea of gingers and their significant others. Directly in front of him were Molly and Fitz, with Lucy and Hilarion beside them and Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey as well. He picked out Roxanne and Perry a few rows ahead, and not far from them were Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry. James and Navya. Lily and Hob. Uncle George and Aunt Angelina. Fred and Rosina. Uncle Charlie, the eternal bachelor. Even his grandparents, side by side as always. Far up at the front, he could see Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, and Victoire and Teddy beside them with Louis sandwiched in between his mother and sister, no doubt to keep him from his usual mayhem. One of the bridesmaids was eyeing Louis with a look Hugo recognized as not boding well where Louis was concerned.

He realized Albus was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he really was going to fetch his date at the Portkeys. Otherwise he'd managed to ditch the ceremony, in which case Hugo was a little jealous, although he knew Albus was bound to hear about that from his mother.

He was on the point of asking Rose if she'd seen Albus when she glanced at him and whispered, “Guess which bridesmaid has the raging personality disorder.”

Hugo let out a chuckle that earned him a dirty look from his mother. Rose smiled innocently, her eyes on the minister still.

“Five Galleons says he turns up naked in the coat closet with her by the end of the reception,” Hugo whispered to his sister. Glenna overheard this and muffled a giggle in the sleeve of Hugo's suit jacket.

“You're on,” said Rose.

“Shh,” their mother said.

*

Glenna had always liked weddings, but this was the longest one she'd ever been to. It was like attending a royal wedding. Hugo and his sister had been keeping up a whispered commentary on and off throughout the extremely long wedding, which at least served as entertainment while Glenna tuned out the sermon from the minister. Rose was as wry as Hugo was, with a wildness to her that told Glenna she would be a lot of fun at the next Weasley pub crawl.

Hugo was beside her, looking absolutely delectable in a dark suit and blue tie, his red curls shining in the shimmering light of the church. He smelled good, she thought, leaning closer to him again. His hand tightened on hers and he glanced down at her with a smile. She wasn't sure he was paying much attention to the minister. Probably collecting observations for his ongoing jokes with his sister.

“Three down,” Rose whispered then, and Glenna felt Hugo's silent chuckle as he looked over at the bridesmaids.

Rose was right; there were now three bridesmaids watching Louis as if he were being served up for lunch.

“Which one is most likely to steal his wallet, do you think?” Hugo whispered to Rose.

Glenna had to put a hand to her mouth to keep from snorting with laughter before putting in, “The tall one.”

Rose grinned. “Probably all of them. Dominique picked them, remember?”

“For God's sake,” said Rose's boyfriend under his breath, giving the three of them a behave yourselves sort of a look.

“Shh,” Rose told him, smiling mischievously.

Glenna moved a bit closer to Hugo so she could whisper in his ear. He bent toward her, so close she could have licked his earlobe if they hadn't been in the middle of a church, surrounded by his family.

“Do we have time to sneak back to the hotel before the reception?” she breathed into his ear.

He turned his head to whisper back, “No, but we could probably manage to get to the coat closet before Louis and the bridesmaids.”

She did let out a snort of laughter then, and Hugo touched his forehead to hers.

“You're about to get shushed by my mother.”

“Sorry.” She glanced over to see Hermione Weasley was watching the ceremony attentively, but something in her posture said she was paying attention to her children as well.

Glenna hoped she hadn't just shot things in the foot by making his mother dislike her. That seemed bound to ruin things with Hugo. There was a lot of genuine affection among the Weasleys, even for poor beleaguered Louis. They'd all jumped up to defend him immediately last night, after all. That seemed to augur well for the sort of person Hugo was.

Hugo didn't seem worried about his mother, though, and he whispered, “Just joking, she'd blame me anyway for making you laugh. Shouldn't be too much longer, I think. You're a doll to last this long.”

“I was just thinking it's like being at a royal wedding. Seems like it's wrapping up soon, though.”

“God, I hope so.” He paused a moment and then said, “I'm glad you're here. Even if it does go half the bloody day.”

“Me too.” And she was; being at a wedding with Hugo, though they'd only just met, felt romantic and soft in a way she hadn't felt in a long time. He was sweet. And she really loved the way he looked at her.

She thought about what he'd said last night, about how he'd nearly missed her, nearly canceled his date with Gwyneira. She almost hadn't agreed to come: when Gwyneira had Flooed to ask if she wanted to fill in as a wedding date, it had seemed like the stupidest thing she could possibly do. But getting out of town, away from her self-imposed loneliness, had appealed to her. It had been almost two years since she'd caught Jasper, since their break-up had left her feeling broken and mistrustful. Two years of attempted dates that she usually cut short before anyone could get close to her again.

She'd taken a chance on the wedding, thinking it might be a nice weekend away, telling herself she could always just leave if she was uncomfortable.

Instead she'd found Hugo.

And she didn't feel mistrustful of him at all. Hugo had immediately got under her skin, with his kind smile and his adorable attempt at getting revenge against his cousin. The fact that the best he'd been able to come up with was bringing Gwyneira along to be rude to people was hilarious to Glenna.

Jasper would've slept with the bride's best friend, or started a fight with the groom.

That sort of thing didn't even occur to Hugo, apparently. She liked that about him. She liked a lot about him, in fact, especially the dynamite evening in bed they'd had last night, which had been some of the best sex of her life. She was also really enjoying the fact he seemed to be completely taken by her and didn't mind showing it, even in front of his parents. He was smart, sweet, funny, sexy, and she was sure she was going to wake up and find she'd dreamed the last twenty-four hours, because this sort of thing didn't happen to her except in her dreams.

He was stroking her hand again, turned back to the front of the church to fake paying attention. His long fingers danced over hers, learning the shape of her nails and making her skin tingle, so she knew he was really only paying attention to her.

And he wanted to see her when the wedding was over. He could've had a one-night stand, but instead he wanted to see if they had something between them. She thought they did. It certainly didn't feel like any other date she'd been on. Surely that meant they had something real?

She looked up at his profile, the long nose and freckles, the shock of red curls. He felt her gaze and turned to smile at her, hooking one finger to brush his knuckle gently against the tip of her nose.

She'd almost said no to this, she thought in amazement.

“Ron, look at the bridesmaids,” came the whispered voice of his mother.

“We'll be finding Louis in the coat closet with all six of them by the end of the night,” said his father in a low voice.

Hugo caught Glenna's eye, and she had to hide her face in his sleeve again to cover up her laughter.


	10. Spin!

The reception hall was next to the church, and it was just as fancy and expensive-looking as the church had been. Crystal chandeliers, silk bunting, bouquets of flowers on every table, gold utensils and bone china – Lily was impressed at the lengths Dominique would go to in order to show off. Not that it was a surprise after years of being invited to increasingly elaborate and pretentious dinner parties.

“She really outdid herself on this one, didn't she?” James said as he took in the décor and tableware. “If you didn't know she was marrying money before, you sure would seeing all this.”

“I'm going to steal some spoons,” quipped Fred. “I could probably pay my rent off one of those tables.”

“Oh please, like you pay rent.”

“They're not real gold anyway,” Fred said, tapping one of the spoons against a knife. “Just gold-plated or something.”

Lily ditched the two of them quickly, before Fred could test the spoons by biting them and embarrass them all. Her place card was at a table with Hugo and his date, Roxanne and Perry, and Molly and Fitz. Lily was rather surprised at this particular grouping; it was actually rather thoughtful of Dominique to put them together. Hugo and she were close, and Molly and Roxanne were best friends. Hugo and Molly were quite close these days too, come to that. She was amazed that Dominique would think of that, and wondered if Victoire had done the seating chart.

Hob had disappeared somewhere between the church and the reception hall, and she reckoned he'd turn up eventually. So long as he danced with her where Dominique could see them, that was all Lily cared about.

Roxanne, her belly gently rounded under a bright red floral dress that broke at least three of Dominique's rules for wedding clothes, sat down heavily in her seat. “The food better come soon or I'm leaving. I'm _starving_. I'm growing a person here, I can't wait all day to eat.”

“I have some chocolate in my handbag,” Molly volunteered. Her sheath dress was long, black, beaded and sleeveless, and also violated several of Dominique's rules.

“Hand it over.” Roxanne gestured impatiently to her cousin, and Molly dug around in her handbag, coming up with a small bar of chocolate.

“Fine planning ahead,” Perry congratulated her. “She ran out of handbag snacks halfway through the ceremony.”

“She's whiny when she's hungry, even when she's not pregnant,” Molly told him, watching Roxanne devour the candy. “Lily, where's your date?”

Lily shrugged. “Buggered off somewhere, who knows.”

Roxanne glanced around. “There he is, over with that girl Freddie was with. They certainly look friendly. Wasn't he _your_ date? What's he doing with her?”

Lily craned her head to see where Roxanne was looking. Hob was indeed standing off in a corner near the open bar with Rosina, inches apart and clearly into each other. _So much for having a date_ , she thought, disgruntled. “Ugh. I'm going to get a drink.”

She slid out of her chair just as Hugo was arriving, and he leaned over to Roxanne. “What happened?”

“Looks like her date ditched her for Fred's date.”

Hugo looked around and spotted Hob in a corner with Fred's date. “Shite. Poor Lily. She didn't fancy him anyway, though.”

“Where's _your_ date, Hugo?” Roxanne asked.

“Restrooms.”

Molly was looking back and forth between Lily and Hob with a skeptical air. “Well, that was never going to work out,” she said to Fitz in an undertone.

He only snorted, watching Lily with pity on his face.

“You know who she'd be great with?” Molly went on.

“I'm afraid to ask.”

Molly leaned closer and whispered something that Hugo couldn't make out. Fitz grinned at her.

“Right, I like the way you think. Two birds with one stone?”

“Well, I did promise him a setup. Come on, let's go find a Floo. I bet he's still laying around in his jammies right now.”

“Probably still asleep...”

They slid away into the crowd. Hugo couldn't see Glenna yet either, but his sister was visible off in a corner with their cousins Victoire and Lucy. For once, Lucy's husband wasn't attached to her like glue. Rose seemed to be deep in conversation with Victoire, and Lucy's expression as she listened was troubled. Hugo frowned, wondering what they were up to.

“There you are,” said a voice behind him, and he turned to see his father. “Keeping an eye on your sister?”

“Just making sure she wasn't getting into trouble,” Hugo said lightly.

His father chuckled, pulling a flask out of his coat pocket as he sat down in the chair next to Hugo. “She promised to be on her best behavior tonight.”

“So did you,” Hugo pointed out with a meaningful glance at the flask. “Is that your wand in your inside pocket as well?”

“I'm an Auror. I can't run around disarmed. Besides, your uncle Harry brought his. And I'd bet good money your uncle Bill's got his, just in case.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Hugo suspected every Weasley present probably had their wand. His own wand was safely tucked in his suit pocket, awaiting the inevitable Louis problems to be dealt with. His mother, always a stickler for the rules, was likely to be the only one to leave hers behind. And even then, that was because she would know Ron would sneak his in and didn't mind her borrowing it.

“I've got your mum's wand too,” Ron confided, patting his suit pocket.

Or his mother had stashed her wand with her husband and thrown the rules out the window.

“I have my wand,” Perry admitted. “And Roxanne's got hers in her bag.”

Roxanne gave her husband a nudge. “Shh, you weren't supposed to tell anyone.”

“I have mine, too,” Hugo told them, grinning.

“Oh, bloody hell,” his father exclaimed then, astonished. “Albus is here.”

Hugo looked around, and when he caught sight of his cousin, his jaw dropped.

Albus was strolling in with a smug look on his face and a date on his arm. The sight of Albus with a date was amazing enough on its own, but Albus's date was something else. Seven feet tall from her rhinestone-encrusted heels to her platinum blonde curls, in a skin-tight evening gown made of some sort of iridescent fabric, she clung to Albus's arm, grinning and wiggling her jeweled fingers at the wedding guests as they stared at her.

“Oh my God, he brought Mimi,” Hugo said, awestruck.

His father was grinning now. “Yeah, that's Mimi all right.”

Rose's revenge was clearly afoot. Hugo briefly felt annoyed that she hadn't asked her own brother to assist, but then, he wasn't sure he could carry it off with quite the aplomb that Albus did. Besides, if he hadn't needed a date, he'd never have met Glenna.

Rose stood gracefully and hurried over to Albus and Mimi in a flutter of pale pink ruffles. She and Mimi exchanged cheek kisses. Rose looked distinctly smug. Hugo started looking for Dominique and found her standing beside her new mother-in-law a few tables away from the commotion.

Dominique didn't scowl in public, but the look on her face was the closest to it that was humanly possible without wrinkling one's forehead. She looked ready to spit nails.

Victoire was up greeting Mimi now, and Hugo was dying to know what they were saying to one another. Albus caught his eye and winked.

Glenna appeared at his side, settling into the seat Lily had vacated. “Is Albus's date a, erm...”

“Drag queen?” his father supplied, still grinning. He had his flask out again. “Oh yes. Mimi Boheme.”

“She's a friend of Rose's from New York,” Hugo explained as his father offered the flask to Glenna.

Glenna took a swig of whiskey and then laughed, handing the flask back. “This gets better and better. Wow, look at the bride. I don't think she's very happy.”

“That was undoubtedly what Rose was going for,” Hugo murmured. “Dominique was so very determined to have everyone be normal and inconspicuous today. She did everything but give Muggle lessons.”

“You don't get much more conspicuous than your sister's friend there,” Glenna said.

“That'll teach Dominique.” Ron chuckled softly. “She'll think twice before she insults Rose again.”

Dominique looked very unhappy, but before she could move, Hugo saw his mother heading over to Mimi to give her a hug. Dominique's expression abruptly changed to a faint, pleasant smile. Hugo shook his head. His mother had undoubtedly done that in part as a silent message to Dominique not to be rude to Mimi, but Hermione was actually rather fond of Mimi, who had assisted Rose during her debacle in New York. Mimi and Rose were kindred spirits, which was not necessarily a good thing in Hugo's opinion. The last thing Rose needed was another partner in crime. Mimi was fun, though. Loud, but fun.

“Actually, you'll probably love Mimi,” he said to Glenna. “Come on, I'll introduce you.”

“I'm going to go find your uncle Harry,” said Ron. “He won't want to miss the fireworks. Have Bill and Fleur seen yet, can you tell?”

Roxanne was looking through her bag. “Didn't we bring the camera, Perry? Honestly, I was sure I had it in here. I need a picture of Dominique's face.”

Hugo pulled Glenna to her feet. “Come on. We'll go say hi to Mimi.”

Glenna followed Hugo, holding tight to his hand as they threaded through the clusters of people in the reception hall, heading for his cousin Albus. She was having a hard time holding back a grin.

Albus had brought an American drag queen as his date. The reception could only get more entertaining from here, she thought with glee. This was the best wedding she'd ever been to.

Hugo's mother had been at the table with Albus only a few moments ago, but she'd disappeared before they got there. Rose was still there, with her boyfriend on one side and Mimi on the other. Victoire and Lucy had disappeared as well. Glenna wondered how many of them had gone to the bride to keep her from freaking out.

“Hi Mimi!” Hugo said cheerfully as they sat down next to Albus. “Haven't seen you in a while.”

“Hey Hugo! You look mighty fine in that suit, and I still love a man with a accent.” Mimi winked at him. “You wanna come be my tall, red-headed and nekkid later? I already got tall, dark, and handsome over here.”

“Hugo's taken now, Mimi, you can't have him,” spoke up Rose. She was grinning widely. “That's his new girlfriend, Glenna.”

Glenna didn't argue with the descriptor. It sounded pretty good, actually. She waved to Mimi. “Nice to meet you.”

“Ain't you pretty.” Mimi gestured at her, her long fingernails clicking as she closed her hand. “I like those flowers in your hair, baby girl. I hope you're ready to keep him happy. He's awful pretty and I could make him real happy, if you know what I mean.”

Hugo laughed. “Thanks, Mimi. Glenna is definitely keeping me happy.”

“Well, please yourself. Imma go get a drink, I'll be right back. You stay handsome with that accent, you hear?” And Mimi swept away with the grace of a queen.

“This is my favorite wedding I've ever been to,” Glenna said to Hugo.

“And we haven't even been to the open bar yet,” he quipped.

Albus was sprawled in his chair, looking smug as he watched Mimi making her way to the bar. She was once again causing a huge commotion as she walked through the hall. Clearly at home in the spotlight, she waved as if she were being greeted by adoring fans. Most of the guests were staring at her, open-mouthed.

“That's a hell of a plus one you brought, Albus,” Hugo remarked to his cousin.

“It was Rose's idea,” he said modestly.

“So this was Rose's revenge plan? Bringing Mimi to make a scene?”

“Oh, she's diabolical, that sister of yours,” said Albus. “She didn't want to make a scene at the wedding. She wanted the _potential_ of a horrible scene, showing Dominique what she _could_ have done to her, and that all the power was Rose's through the entire reception.”

“Good lord,” Hugo said, astonished. “That's bloody genius.”

“Deeply diabolical.” Glenna looked over with new appreciation at Rose, who was sitting back in her chair as if it were a throne, a glass of wine in one hand and a look of satisfaction on her face while she watched Dominique pretending everything was fine. That would probably be the last time Dominique said anything rude about Rose's parenting, Glenna thought with a chuckle.

“I thought it was brilliant, myself,” Albus agreed. “So of course I said I'd be happy to help. Dommie needs to learn some humility, since kindness seems beyond her. And you know Mimi. Travel to Europe for free, a chance to be the center of attention, and if things went to hell she's always ready for a brawl. She jumped at the chance to play along.”

“Unbelievable. Well, you enjoy being tall, dark, and handsome.” Hugo patted Albus's shoulder as he stood up, then turned to Glenna and held out a hand. “Care to dance?”

“Sure.” She put her hand in his, letting him pull her gently to her feet, thinking of how Rose had said _Hugo's taken now_. And he had said she was keeping him happy, too. Yes, she thought firmly. He was definitely taken.

This was her dreams come to life, and she was not letting that get away.

*

Lily plopped into a seat next to Fred. He had his elbows propped on the table, chin resting on the heels of his hands and looking very morose, sitting at a table on the edge of the dance floor by himself. There were two empty glasses in front of him, and he'd already untied his bow tie, leaving it draped around his neck.

“Did you see Hob and Rosina?” she asked, hearing the annoyance in her own voice.

“Yeah. Left, didn't they? Supposed to be my friend and he scarpered off with my date, the bastard.”

“I only wanted him to dance with me once, so Dominique could see,” Lily said bad-temperedly. “He's completely useless.”

“Bastard,” Fred agreed.

“Are they playing waltzes?” she asked in disbelief, watching the dancers. Dominique was out there with her baron, waltzing perfectly and looking absolutely flawless with her train draped over one arm. The tiara twinkled in the light from the chandeliers. “My God, she's so pretentious.”

“She married a baron. Maybe this is normal,” Fred suggested. “I don't know how to waltz, though.”

“I do, sort of.” Lily looked around. “I think the question is if any of that lot knows how to waltz. I think they might be too old to dance properly.”

“Or too rich,” said Fred disparagingly, whose father owned half a block in Diagon Alley and a few buildings in Hogsmeade to boot.

“I doubt any of our lot knows how, either, come to that.” Lily caught a glimpse of Hugo and Glenna out on the dance floor. They clearly did not know what they were doing, but seemed to be having a grand time pretending they did. If he hadn't only met Glenna just the day before, Lily would have said Hugo was in love. Certainly well on his way to it, that was for sure. “How did Hugo manage to have such a fantastic date when he was only ever getting a fake one to begin with?”

“Bastard,” Fred said again.

“It's not bloody fair.”

“I didn't even get laid.”

“I didn't want to sleep with your stupid friend, I just wanted him to stick around for the reception.”

“Bastard.”

“LOUIS WEASLEY!”

Lily and Fred looked up simultaneously, and Lily got to her feet to see over the crowd, searching for the woman who had just screamed her cousin's name. It had sounded magically magnified, not a normal shout. She spotted her a moment later, recognizing the blonde woman immediately.

“It's that witch from the pub,” she gasped.

“LOUIS!” the woman was screaming again. She was dressed in Muggle clothes but she had her wand out. It was trailing gold sparks, which wasn't a good sign. She was out of control.

“Oh, a Louis scene is just what I need to cheer me up,” Fred said.

The woman was still screaming Louis's name, stumbling a bit as she made her way through the crowd, and Molly and Fitz were suddenly at her side. Molly tried to grab the woman's wand arm, but she jerked away. A bolt of red light shot from her wand, smashing one of the centerpieces on the nearby tables. Flower petals flew through the air, fluttering onto the dance floor.

Everything seemed to have dragged to a stop now, and Dominique was standing in the center of the dance floor with Reinolt, looking horrified. Lily couldn't pick out Louis anywhere. Either he'd already made it to the coat closet with a few bridesmaids, or he was hiding.

“LOUIS! YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU GOT ME PREGNANT AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER ME!” The witch lunged away from Molly, stumbling against one of the Muggle guests, her wand smacking into the woman's wine glass. The wine didn't spill, but the glass began to grow rapidly, expanding in size. Fitz was distracted, pulling his wand from his coat pocket and attempting to shrink the glass back to normal size while the Muggles at the table screamed in alarm.

“Shite,” whispered Lily.

“Pregnant?” Fred echoed in awe. “Louis has a kid?”

“LOUIS! LOUIS! YOU OWE ME FOR CHILD SUPPORT FOR YOUR SON, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

“Oooh, I knew some kinda bullshit like this was gonna happen,” came the loud voice of Rose's friend Mimi. Lily glanced over at her and saw Mimi pulling some popcorn from her handbag. Albus aimed his wand at it and it began to pop. Rose reached over for a handful. Scorpius looked like he disapproved, but he took a kernel from Rose's hand and popped it in his mouth.

The witch was struggling with Molly, still screaming for Louis and setting off more accidental magic. The Muggle guests nearest to them were beginning to panic. Lily envisioned things going downhill very quickly from here, but the object of the night's scene appeared then, distracting the witch as she made her way through the crowd with chaos in her wake.

“What's going on?”

Louis had emerged from behind a potted plant with one of the bridesmaids, looking disheveled. When he caught sight of the witch, his eyes went wide.

“Oh fu-”

“LOUIS!” The witch from the pub aimed her wand at him and fired off a hex. Louis and the bridesmaid dove away from each other, and the potted plant they'd been hiding behind exploded, shards of pottery and leaves flying everywhere.

Louis scrambled to his feet in time to get hit by another bolt of red light. He went down again like a bag of bricks, landing hard on the floor and taking a chair out with him, knocked out by the ineptly cast Stunner.

Lily jumped to her feet as the Muggle guests began screaming throughout the room. Everyone was getting up in an escape attempt, and Lily tried to push her way through the crowd.

She couldn't get anywhere near the witch, but it didn't matter anyway because her mother had just tackled the woman, and between the two of them, Ginny and Molly managed to wrest her wand away. Ginny tossed it to James, who caught it and pocketed it, then turned to the guests around him, ready for crowd control. Navya was already trying to calm them down, her hands held wide as if she could placate their obvious terror.

Lily made her way over to her mother, who was sitting on the witch in an attempt to keep her pinned down. Molly was laying across the witch's legs. Defeated now, the witch stopped struggling and began to cry hysterically.

“He didn't even remember me,” she sobbed. “I never told him about the baby but he should have remembered me...”

Ginny looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Go get your father, Lily.”

Her aunt Fleur was over near the exit, her veela charms turned to full blast as she tried to calm the Muggles and keep them from leaving.

“Everything will be fine,” she was trilling, “ _tout va bien, pas de panique_ -”

Lily rushed up to where her father was surrounded by a knot of their relatives.

“Who's got their wand? We're going to need an awful lot of Memory Charms for this one,” her father groaned, probably picturing the paperwork he was going to have to do.

Lily pulled hers from her clutch. “I brought mine.”

Around her she saw her uncles, aunts, and cousins pulling wands from their pockets and handbags. Even her elderly grandparents had their wands.

“I left mine in the hotel room,” Scorpius announced virtuously. “The invitation did say no wands.”

“Sure, the Malfoy is the only well-behaved guest,” Uncle Ron joked.

Scorpius smiled at him.

“Mum wants you,” Lily said to her father.

“Not right now,” he said. “I'll deal with the guests, you go find your uncle Bill and send him to your mother. Louis will need his parents with him for this one.”

Aunt Hermione was frowning. “Dominique looks about to hyperventilate. Hugo, can you do anything to calm her down?”

“Maybe a sock to the jaw,” mumbled a voice behind her, and Lily glanced around to see Rose standing there. Rose smiled at her angelically.

Hugo sighed but trotted off toward the bride, who was flailing her arms wildly, red in the face, as her elder sister and their cousin Lucy (both with wands drawn) were doing their best to keep her confined or calm, Lily couldn't tell. Teddy Lupin was standing next to the trio of women, his arms folded across his chest, wand in one hand, and an expression of deep annoyance on his face. Dommie's baron was pacing beside him, occasionally glancing around at the crowd of wedding guests with a worried look on his handsome face.

“He's going to need to calm Reinolt down too,” Lily murmured.

She spotted her uncle then, and started for his side, leaving the rest of them to modify a hundred memories. Uncle Bill was stooped over his son's fallen form, and Louis was stirring. Bill must have revived him from the Stunner he'd been hit with. Uncle Bill’s expressions were always a bit ominous thanks to his scars, but this time Lily thought the sternness was justified.

“What happened?” Louis mumbled groggily.

“Apparently you have a son. Do you even know that woman's name?”

Louis looked guilty. “No...”

Uncle Bill glanced over at the witch. Ginny and Molly had let her up now, and she was still sobbing, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ginny looked over and caught her brother's eye, then grabbed the witch by one arm while Molly took the other, and they pulled her to her feet.

“With me, Louis. We need to find somewhere private to sort this out so you don't ruin your sister's wedding completely.”

Louis scrambled to his feet and followed his father out of the room, head hanging.

Fred jogged up to her. “Can't believe we got a Louis story in the middle of the wedding. Dominique is going to kill him. Hell, Victoire is going to kill him.”

Lily shook her head. “Unbelievable. If Uncle Bill or his sisters don’t kill him, my dad will for the sheer amount of paperwork this is going to cause.”

Fred looked optimistic. “Still, it was more fun than Dommie’s last wedding.”


	11. Raise Your Glass

“I can't believe this,” Dominique was seething. She was red in the face, the train to her wedding dress torn where she'd stepped on it in her rush to get out of the line of fire a few moments ago. “He ruins _everything_.”

Lucy was making soothing sounds beside her, though her face was troubled. Victoire was patting her sister's arm, looking angry but still making an attempt at calming Dominique. Teddy hadn't even bothered, just watched Louis being led away by his father with a dark expression. Aunt Ginny had followed with the unidentified witch – the mother of Louis's child, apparently – held tightly in her grasp.

Hugo stood beside the bride, watching the progress of the Memory Charms being performed all around the room. He'd been assigned to keep the bride from hyperventilating, but there seemed more danger that she would follow her brother and hex the daylights out of him than that she would pass out from hysterics. He glanced at her new husband, who was pacing nearby with the same angry expression Victoire wore. It occurred to Hugo that Dominique's need for perfection at the wedding would probably mean she wanted the baron's memory wiped of the Louis incident that had marred the day.

“Dommie,” Hugo said in a low voice, “Are you going to want me to modify Reinolt's memory?”

She gave him an angry look. “Of course not. Why would you modify Reinolt's memory?”

Reinolt stopped pacing and looked round.

“He is _my husband_ , and we will only have the truth between us,” Dominique said, shaking a finger at Hugo. “You won't modify anything, Hugo.”

Reinolt nodded solemnly at this. “I knew what might happen if Louis attended, but he's her brother. How could we not have him with us today?”

Impressed, Hugo could only nod back. Dominique went back to muttering dark threats of bodily harm against her brother, and Reinolt resumed pacing. They might make it after all, Hugo thought in wonder. There really was more to the baron than he'd given the man credit for.

“I'm going to go make sure your dad doesn't beat the stuffing out of your brother,” Teddy told his wife, jabbing his thumb at the door where Uncle Bill and Aunt Ginny had disappeared with Louis and the witch. Victoire nodded at him and he headed off, stowing his wand back into the breast pocket of his suit as he walked.

“I think things will calm down now,” Lucy said. She was surveying the reception hall. Most everyone did in fact seem to have been calmed down, their memories wiped of the sight of magic, not to mention the dramatic scene. All around them, the reception was returning to business as usual. “I suppose we'll just carry on as if nothing happened?”

Hugo nodded. “I mean really, if we dropped everything whenever Louis had some sort of women trouble, we'd never get anything done. And we didn't have to call the MLEs, so it wasn't that bad, all things considered.” His eyes found Glenna, sitting at a table with his cousin Lily. Both of them were laughing, and Glenna looked unbelievably beautiful. He was devoutly grateful that she had not been scared off by witnessing a full-scale Louis incident.

Lucy chuckled. “We'll make it through without Louis being arrested, I think. Go on back to your date, Hugo.”

“Thanks Luce.” He smiled at her, and she made shooing motions with her hands.

He ran into Molly before he could reach Glenna and Lily, however, and stopped to talk to her. Molly had been the most up close and personal with Louis's witch, barring their aunt Ginny, and he was curious what else she'd found out.

“How much did you hear of what she was saying?” Molly responded when he asked for details.

“Something about a son?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Trust Louis to knock up some witch he doesn't remember and not even know he's got a kid running around. Apparently the little boy is two now and looks just like Louis.”

“They have tests to prove-”

“I know. Uncle Bill will make them run the tests for proof, but honestly it's probably all true. It's typical Louis, isn't it?”

“Reckon so. Wonder if he's got any other offspring he doesn't know about.”

“Probably.” Molly seemed to be searching the crowd, probably looking for Fitz, but her eyes rested on Glenna instead. “Things seem to be going well for you tonight.”

“I think so.”

“I like her,” Molly confided. “She's pretty fun, Hugo. Are you going to keep seeing her after this weekend?”

“Of course.” He smiled, thinking of future weekends and evenings stretching before him in Glenna's company. He couldn't wait. “She's incredible. I can't believe I met her accidentally. What if Gwyneira hadn't got sick? What if I'd canceled when I was feeling sorry for Dommie? I wouldn't have met her.”

Molly smiled. “You really fancy her, don't you?”

“Absolutely.”

They watched in silence as Glenna rose from her seat, giving Lily a friendly wave, and made her way over to Rose's table. Mimi still had popcorn on the table, and Glenna took a handful, joining in their conversation.

She fit in well with his family, Hugo thought with a rush of pleasure. She hadn't been fazed by two Louis incidents or Albus turning up with a drag queen. If she could handle all that, and even enjoy herself, surely she could handle the Weasleys long-term.

“How did you know you were in love with Fitz?” he asked his cousin without thinking, his eyes still on Glenna laughing with his sister.

“You're not in love with Glenna, you just met her yesterday,” Molly said without missing a beat.

Hugo sighed. “That's not what... Nevermind.”

She was quiet beside him for a moment, then heaved a sigh of her own. “You want to know if it's the beginning of love. Look, it wasn't easy for us. I didn't think we would work out for a while there. But I don't think it's like that for everyone. Look at your sister and Scorpius. He asked her out one day when they were sixteen and they've been together ever since. Everybody's different. Victoire and Teddy were best friends and then one day realized they were in love. You can't use me as an example. You've got to do your own thing.”

“It feels easy. Maybe too easy?” He watched Glenna from across the room, smiling and laughing with Rose, her long silky hair shimmering in the warm light of the banquet hall as she moved.

“Maybe easy's not bad. Maybe easy is where it starts for you two.”

They sat quietly together a little longer, then Molly remarked, “I like her. I hope this really is love for you, Hugo, I really do.”

“Thanks, Molly.”

“Your sister likes her. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign.” Molly chuckled.

Hugo grinned. “I'm going to take it as a good sign.”

Molly checked her watch. “You do that. I've got to go run a quick errand.” She patted Hugo on the shoulder. “I'll see you later on.”

“You're running an errand? The reception's not over yet!” he called after her, but she only waved to him as she walked away.

*

Lily was sipping a glass of champagne, alone at her table. Glenna had come to visit her, but had moved on now to Rose's table, which seemed a more raucous place to be at the moment. Lily didn't feel much like joining the party over there.

It wasn't that her feelings were hurt because Hob had ditched her for Rosina. She hadn't been attracted to him anyway.

It was just a little galling that he hadn't even said a word before he'd left. She supposed she couldn't really expect common courtesy from one of James and Fred's friends, after all.

Hugo slid into the seat beside her. “Everything all right, Lily? Where's Hob?”

She rolled her eyes and slumped down a bit in her chair. “He ran off with Freddie's date. They left before the Louis incident.”

“Wow. Sorry, Lily.”

“I don't even care, honestly. It's not like I fancied him. It's just a bit humiliating, that's all.”

Hugo gave her a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Maybe next time Dominique gets married, you'll find a better date.”

She laughed. “Oh, thanks for that.”

He looked away, toward his sister's table, and she smiled at him fondly. He was watching Glenna. He really seemed into her, and luckily for him, she seemed just as into him. Despite some jealousy that things had worked out so badly for her blind date and so well for Hugo's, Lily was happy for him. Hugo was probably her favorite cousin, after all. “Things seem to be going well for you, though. Glenna's wonderful.”

Hugo grinned widely. “Isn't she?”

“You really lucked out. I got ditched and you got the perfect date. It's like magic,” she joked, and Hugo laughed again.

“I'm dead amazed myself.”

“At least you're happy,” Lily said grumpily. “I'm going to be alone forever.”

“Fred and James have plenty more friends,” Hugo said cheerfully.

“Oh, shut it.”

He patted her shoulder again. “I'm going to go see Glenna. You want to come with me?”

“No, I'd rather just sit here a little longer.”

She watched Hugo joining his sister's table. Glenna leaned into him as soon as he sat down beside her. They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves at Rose's table, with Mimi to entertain them, but Lily wasn't in the mood. Apparently Hugo and Glenna weren't really either, since they got up to head for the bar after a few minutes of chatting with Rose and her crowd.

She finished her champagne and was on the point of going for more when she heard someone calling her name.

“Oi! Lily!”

She looked round and spotted Molly and Fitz coming toward her.

“Where the hell did you run off to?” Lily asked Molly.

“Had to fetch someone,” she said.

“Lily, have you met Jinks?” Fitz drawled with a gesture at the man immediately behind him.

He stepped closer, and Lily looked up at a face she had only seen in newspapers before. Their eyes met, and she forgot to breathe. He smiled at her, his dark eyes sparkling beneath shaggy brown curls. She held out her right hand unthinkingly, intending to shake his hand, but he reached out with his left hand and held on instead. It didn't strike her as strange at all, only completely natural that he would hold her hand, fitting neatly against his long fingers as if they had been designed to be together. As if they'd been holding hands for years.

“Hi,” Lily said breathlessly.

He looked just as mesmerized by her as she was feeling for him. “Hi.”

Molly smiled smugly.

“Evander Jinks, this is Molly's cousin Lily Potter.” Fitz finished the introduction and then looked back and forth at them with eyebrows raised.

“Lily Potter,” Jinks repeated, still sounding utterly gobsmacked by her. He had a faintly Scottish accent, trilling the R in her last name. The way he said an L was liquid gold. Suddenly she really wanted to hear him say her entire name, several times over.

“This worked brilliantly,” Fitz said, turning to Molly. “You're a bloody genius.”

“Go away,” Jinks told them. He didn't take his eyes off Lily, but he did nod his head at them to indicate they ought to clear off.

“Yeah, you can both bugger off now,” Lily added.

Molly took Fitz by the hand and led him away, giving Jinks a small wave as she left. She still looked very smug, but Lily did not care one bit.

Jinks hadn't let go of her hand, and she didn't think she had blinked once. He was wearing a Muggle-style three piece suit in navy blue, with a turquoise shirt and tie. Lily was impressed by the fit, and even more by the shoulders that fit revealed. Custom suit, her trained eye told her, and a lot of weight-lifting. He wasn't as broad-shouldered as Fitz, but his waist was narrow and he had the long and lean build of a swimmer. Lily decided at once he was exactly her type.

Not to mention there was something about him that had immediately grabbed her and held on for dear life.

“I can't believe we never met before,” she said in wonder, mentally kicking herself for missing all those team parties Molly had invited her to. She could have had him holding her hand and looking at her as if she were the only person in the room, the only person in the _world_ , so much sooner.

“I can't either.” His eyes were taking her in, the same way she was taking him in. She didn't feel self-conscious at all. It was quite obvious to her that he liked what he saw, anyway.

“What did Molly tell you about me?” she asked eagerly.

“That you're stylish and smart and can probably resist the urge to strangle me in my sleep. What has she told you about me?”

It was funny because she wouldn't have thought she knew anything Molly had said about him, but now he was here and staring at her as if no one else existed, she remembered immediately something Molly had told her. “That you're a gigantic prat but she loves you like a brother.”

He grinned. “I like that. Want to dance?”

Lily looked around. The dance floor was still full of stodgy aristocrats doing a rather staid waltz. “Do you know how to waltz?”

“I do, but I'm going to go faster than that lot. I think they're dancing at half tempo.” He nodded at the middle-aged couples. “You game?”

“I am if you are.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and swung them into the dance. Lily hung on tightly as they whirled around, enjoying the feeling of strong arms around her and long legs against hers. He was graceful, and he smelled absolutely divine. The gracefulness didn't surprise her, since she'd seen a bit of him flying on the wireless in game footage.

“I may never live this down,” he admitted a moment later. “Coach didn't know I could dance properly. Bets that he says I'm too lazy for this sort of thing?”

“Are you lazy?” Lily asked. She found the idea of him having this flaw rather adorable. Aside from her well-maintained wardrobe, she was no slouch in the laziness arena herself. She'd been known to buy new clothes instead of doing laundry.

He managed to shrug without losing his rhythm. “Well, I do like to have a lie-in, and I'd rather not train if I can get out of it. And I can fall asleep on my broom at two hundred meters up.”

“That's actually sort of impressive.”

“I've always thought so. I know everyone calls me Jinks all the time, but will you call me Evander?”

She blinked at the sudden change of topic. “Sure. Evander.”

He smiled and pulled her a little tighter. “Not many people call me that, and I definitely want you to be one of them. I like your hair.”

“I like your shoulders.”

She hadn't meant to say that, but her hand was on the shoulder in question and it was a little distracting.

He was grinning again now. “Well then. I like your legs. And your hands.” He pulled their clasped hands closer and kissed her knuckles.

“You don't really want to stay here, do you?” Lily asked, feeling flushed and once more out of breath. “Let's go somewhere. Alone. Somewhere more fun.”

He nodded immediately, curls bobbing a bit. “I heard you can get powdered dragon claw in the grocery stores here. Bound to be something fun to do in a place like that.”

Lily tugged his hand and he followed her off the glossy parquet dance floor. They slipped out a side door and into the night, still hand in hand.

Hugo watched them sneak out with a grin while Glenna was stifling her giggles beside him. Fitz and Molly, sitting beside Hugo, were both shaking their heads.

“Fast work on Lily's part, there, isn't it?” Hugo laughed.

“And well done to her,” Glenna chuckled.

“Fast work on both their parts,” Molly remarked. “Was I right or was I right?”

“Those are usually the only options,” Fitz agreed. “And yeah, right isn't even the half of it. Like I said, you're a bloody genius. Looks like we'll be seeing a lot of Lily in Portree soon.”

Molly grinned. “Finally get her to come to Scotland, all we had to do was throw a Seeker at her.”

“Excellent matchmaking, Molls,” Hugo congratulated her.

She took a little bow, then said, “Glad you don't need any, since I hadn't anyone for you, unless you like Beathan and her koi ponds, or maybe Fitz's ex-wife.”

Hugo choked on a laugh. “Gee thanks, coz.”

“You do appear to have done fine on your own,” Fitz put in, gesturing toward Glenna. “She didn't run screaming from the Louis incident, which is probably a good sign.”

“Or a bad one. Anyone sane would have run screaming,” Molly quipped, grinning at Glenna.

Glenna pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I didn't see any of you running, either.”

“Oh, Weasleys are mental. Well-known fact. Not sure what Fitz's problem is, though...” Hugo kept a straight face even when Fitz made a rude hand gesture at him.

“At least none of you brought popcorn. I nearly died when Albus's date pulled the popcorn from her handbag.” Glenna laughed. “My mother would have killed her on the spot.”

“I expect Aunt Fleur is lying down somewhere with a headache.” Molly glanced around for the mother of the bride. “She seems to have disappeared.”

“Bets that she's got Louis in a Body-Bind curse somewhere hidden?” Fitz seemed to find the entire situation hilarious.

“This really is the best wedding I've ever been to,” said Glenna.

Hugo decided that while running screaming from the Weasleys might be the sanest course of action, it probably wasn't a good reaction for prospective spouses, so the fact that Fitz was sticking around through all this was undoubtedly a good sign for his relationship with Molly, even if it might not speak well of his mental health.

Glenna, he noted with a thrill of pleasure, didn't appear to be going anywhere either. She was leaning against him, in fact, and taking in the scene with a wide grin, having every appearance of enjoying herself immensely.

Molly was right, as usual. Glenna wasn't running. And neither was Hugo.


	12. Postscript: Jinks's Side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: So, I couldn't resist writing Lily meets Jinks from his point of view. It shows a bit more than their scene in the last chapter. Enjoy!

Evander Jinks didn't wake quickly. He tended to do everything at a leisurely pace, waking up included, with the sole exception of catching the Snitch. He saved all his rather considerable speed for the pitch.

So when he heard something in his fireplace, he merely rolled over and blinked groggily, in no hurry to do anything about it. He'd fallen asleep on the sofa last night, and not for the first time. He barely remembered getting home. Drinking with the Beaters usually ended that way. He was no lightweight, but Declan Preece and Duff Gittins outweighed him by two stone of solid muscle and could metabolize their liquor faster because of it.

“Huh?”

The noise eventually began to resolve itself into words, and he realized his teammate and close friend, Molly Weasley, was in his fireplace, her head surrounded by green flames, calling his name.

“Wake up, you lazy sod,” she was saying.

“What time is it?” Evander groaned, sitting up. “Is it morning? Are we sacked?”

She ignored his last question. “It's afternoon, Jinks. How can you still be sleeping?”

“I was out late last night with Preece and Gittins. I'm trying to have a lie-in.” His eyes fell on the small clock on the mantel. It was three in the afternoon. He'd gone to bed around four in the morning. “I wasn't done sleeping, why are you waking me up?”

“Get a shower and get dressed. Wear something fancy.”

Evander rubbed his eyes and then ran a hand through his hair. The curls were sticking out in a halo round his head. He probably ought to cut it. “Where am I going?”

“You're getting that setup you asked me for.”

He yawned. “Oh. All right.”

“In Amsterdam.”

He yawned again. It wasn't that he had no interest, it was just that he trusted Molly. Whoever she had in mind to set him up with was probably going to be great, so why worry?

He rarely worried about much of anything, to be honest. It just wasn't his style.

“How fancy are we talking, here?”

“Do you have a tux?”

An hour later, Evander was wearing his best Muggle suit, a navy three-piece he'd had custom made only last year, and was in Edinburgh waiting on an international Portkey to Amsterdam. The witch who had arranged it gushed over him when she recognized him, and Evander signed a few autographs while he waited.

He'd been the Seeker for the Pride of Portree going on six years now, and in the wizarding community in Scotland he was always recognized. So were the other players on his team and the other two Scottish teams, of course, but the Seekers always seemed to get some extra attention from the fans. Still, he rather liked it. It was fun having his photo taken with fans.

Eventually it was his turn for a Portkey, and the next thing he knew, he was in Amsterdam in an alley. Standing a few feet away was the tall and limber form of Portree's Keeper, Molly Weasley. Their coach – and Molly's boyfriend – Riordan Fitzroy was at the end of the alley, obviously keeping an eye out for Muggles. Both of them were very dressed up. Evander was intrigued; he'd never seen Fitz in a tuxedo before, and Molly was wearing a black satin dress with black beadwork on the bodice that was both surprising because she didn't wear a lot of satin, and not surprising because she did wear a lot of black.

“You look nice,” he told Molly. “I see you regrew your hair.”

It was strange to see her with long red curls tumbling down her shoulders. He found himself once again missing the purple Mohawk she had worn when they'd met.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I know, Dominique wouldn't let me come to the wedding with a shaved head.”

“How very boring.”

“Come on.” She grabbed his arm, and he fell into step beside her. Fitz joined them on Molly's other side, and she tucked her free hand in the crook of his arm.

“Who is this I'm meeting?” Evander asked, starting to relish the idea of this setup now that he was fully awake and the prospect was imminent. Molly was one of his favorite people in the world, and according to her, she'd been carefully looking for someone right for him. Someone, she said, who wouldn't mind that on game days he still wore his old Slytherin pajamas from when he was fifteen, even though they were now six inches too short.

It was good luck. Evander believed strongly in luck. A world with magic was a world with luck, obviously.

“Molly's cousin,” Fitz answered.

Molly was a Weasley. He vaguely remembered several Weasleys being at school with him, all in Gryffindor, so he knew there were a lot of them trotting about the planet. “Which cousin?”

“You haven't met her yet. Her name is Lily.” Molly's eyes were gleaming, which he took as a positive sign. Evander wondered if her cousin Lily looked like her. So far, every relative of Molly's that he'd met had resembled her to some degree. This was excellent, as Molly was quite fit.

“What's she like?”

“Oh, she's smart, stylish. She's a clotheshorse. And I'm ninety percent sure she can resist the urge to strangle you in your sleep one day.”

“Cheers.”

“Her dad is Harry Potter, fair warning,” said Fitz.

Evander started. Molly's arm looped through his kept him walking or he would have stopped in his tracks. “Really? Harry Potter?”

“Don't make a big deal of it,” Molly advised. “You knew Harry Potter is my uncle. Breathe.”

“I'm breathing. You know me, I'm not bothered.” He was a little impressed, though, despite himself. Harry Potter was probably the most famous wizard alive. Knowing he was Molly's uncle was one thing, but Evander had never actually met the man.

“Here we are.” Molly propelled him through the glass and gold doorway of a large banquet hall, and Evander followed her through the foyer to what was clearly a wedding reception in full swing.

The room was crowded, dotted with the bright ginger hair of the Weasleys, and he stayed close behind Molly as she threaded her way through the crowd. It wasn't long before she stopped, letting out a sigh.

“I don't see her. Fitz?”

The coach was taller than Molly by several inches, and looked round over the crowd. “Got her,” he said a moment later.

This time he led the way, with Molly's hand in his and Evander trailing behind them.

Then they stopped rather abruptly in front of a red-headed young woman dressed all in pale blue. Evander forgot to breathe when she looked up at him. Her eyes went wide with shock. He thought he might have been struck by lightning.

He took in the blue eyes framed in black eyeliner and smokey shadow, ruby red lips, and bright red curls like a newly minted bronze Knut, piled on top of her head and caught with sprays of tiny white roses. Her dress was fitted to her torso, then flared out around her legs in a profusion of complicated ruffles and draped silk, the hem hitting just above her knees, revealing shapely calves. He had a sudden very clear image of those legs wrapped around him.

As if from very far away, he heard Fitz introducing them. “Hi,” was all he could manage. It was all she seemed able to say too, but she put out a hand and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to tuck her small hand in his, perfectly fitting as if she'd always been there.

“Lily Potter,” he said in wonder.

She hadn't looked away from him, her mouth slightly open as she stared up at him. He wondered if Molly would hit him if he kissed her cousin in the middle of the crowded room. Lily was staring at him with the same bemused wonder that he was feeling.

But Molly and Fitz were still there. He didn't want or need them around. He only needed Lily.

“Go away,” he told them.

Lily didn't take her eyes off him, her face still full of wonder. “Yeah, bugger off,” she told her cousin as she rose from her seat.

Evander barely noticed them leave, his attention completely held by Lily. He was probably going to be teased about this later when he and Molly and Fitz were back in Portree, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He could feel the electricity between them, her soft skin against his. Teasing was the last thing he could be bothered about.

“I can't believe we never met before,” Lily said, sounding amazed by this. Or maybe by him. He liked that option better.

“I can't either.” He heard the same tone in his own voice. But who cared? He _was_ amazed by her.

Her voice was beautiful, a little bit smokey like expensive whiskey, and pitched low, a contralto maybe. She stepped closer, her hand still in his, and asked eagerly, “What did Molly tell you about me?”

He didn't hold back on this account. “That you're stylish and smart and can probably resist the urge to strangle me in my sleep. What has she told you about me?”

Lily's red lips curved into a mischievous smile that made her even more beautiful. “That you're a gigantic prat but she loves you like a brother.”

That warmed his heart and made him chuckle. “Oh, I like that. Want to dance?”

He didn't get much chance for this sort of fancy dancing, but he knew how to waltz properly and to his delight, so did she. He swung her through a few whirling turns just for an excuse to hold her close. She was shorter than her cousin, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulders. Her left hand slid up his bicep to his shoulder, as if she were feeling him out surreptitiously.

She liked his shoulders. He liked her legs. Hell, he liked the rest of her too, from the top of her curly red head to her red-painted toenails.

“Let's go somewhere,” she suggested breathlessly as the music drew to a close. “You don't really want to stay here, do you? Let's go somewhere more fun. Alone.”

He didn't much care where he was, so long as she stayed nearby and kept touching him. If she wanted to leave, that was fine by him. And hell, this was Amsterdam. “I heard you can buy powdered dragon claw in the supermarkets here. Bound to be something fun around here.”

She turned, and the hand he'd been holding since the moment he'd seen her twisted in his grip, never losing touch. She was tugging at him, headed for a back door or corridor, he didn't know. It wasn't the way he'd come in.

It turned out to be a back corridor, and he could see a coat room down the end, next to the exit. They were walking side by side to the exit, still holding hands, when Lily stopped abruptly and turned to him.

“Kiss me,” she said.

He didn't have to be told twice.

Five minutes later, her shapely calves were around his waist, heels digging into his buttocks, her back pressed against the wall of the corridor, and her hands were in his hair, ruffling up his curls. He must have put a hand in her hair too, because a few locks were tumbling down out of her updo, brushing her cheeks gently. He kissed her a few more times for good measure, then disentangled their limbs, letting her slide gently down the wall. She had kicked off her shoes, and he went to fetch them for her.

“Well,” she said, clutching his arm for balance as she slipped her feet back into her stilettos.

“Well?”

“I just wanted to make sure.” She still had a hold of his arm, her body pressed up against him. She fit perfectly. He wrapped one arm around her waist and kissed her temple.

“Are you sure now?”

She nodded. “I'm sure.”

“Me too.” He leaned down to kiss her again, then rested his forehead against hers, their breath mingled.

“Damn, I owe Molly big now.” Lily heaved a contented sigh. “She said she was a better matchmaker than Fred. She was right.”

Evander grinned. “She usually is, but I've learned to live with that. Where do you live, Lily?”

“London. I can Floo to your place. And you can Floo to mine.”

He hadn't even had to explain. She had known instantly what he was getting at. He was once more overcome by amazement that this perfect woman had been trotting about England, absolutely meant for him and he for her, and he'd never found her before. He realized he also owed Molly big time. His firstborn, or possibly his soul. Maybe even his lucky Slytherin pajamas.

“Anytime you want me,” he told Lily, entirely serious. “Day or night. I'll even wake up at dawn if you like.”

She wrinkled her nose, and he found it adorable. “If _I_ don't wake up at dawn, there's no point you doing so.”

Oh good, she wasn't an early bird. Thank the Lord and all his saints. He pictured her in his bed, having a lie-in on a Sunday afternoon. Perfect. “How long are you staying in Amsterdam?”

“I go home tomorrow.”

“Will you come see me tomorrow in Skye?”

“Yes, of course. Hang on, does that mean you're not staying in Amsterdam tonight?” She frowned slightly.

“Molly literally pulled me out of bed to come meet you. I didn't pack a thing, and I haven't a hotel room booked.”

“Oh. I have one. A hotel room, I mean.”

His arms tightened around her waist. She really was perfect. “You want me to stay in your hotel room?”

“Seems silly for you to go all the way home now when we've only just found each other. You can catch a Portkey tomorrow with me and my brothers.”

Brothers. This sounded like it should give him pause, but he played professional Quidditch in the position most likely to be injured by the opposing team. Brothers did not deter him. At this point, he wasn't sure anything would deter him from Lily. “If you want me to, that's what I'll do.”

“I do. Do you want to come stay with me?”

He gave her a little nudge, smiling. “Could you not tell by what just happened against that wall?”

Lily smiled. “Oh, I could tell. But I wanted you to say it.”

“I want to be wherever you are,” he told her with perfect honesty. “I don't want to let go of you for a moment.”

The contented sigh was back, and she kissed him, slowly, leisurely. “Evander...”

“Mmm...?”

“Will you do something for me?” Each word was punctuated with a soft kiss. Her voice was a low purr.

His hands were trailing up and down her back, feeling the warmth of the smooth silk, and wondering if underneath she was as warm and silky. Anything she wanted seemed a fine idea right then. “Anything,” he said aloud, again feeling the truth of it.

“I like the way you said my name, when we met. That Scots burr on the R.” She stopped talking for a longer kiss, then said in a breathy whisper, “Will you just say it a few more times?”

“You want more, do you?” He made sure to roll that R a bit extra, and then said her name a few times, his lips next to her ear, feeling her shiver with pleasure.

She opened her mouth to say something, and he couldn't wait to hear what she'd ask for next, but instead a deep voice interrupted them from down the hall.

“Who's this, then?”

They turned their heads to look, still wrapped in each other's arms. Evander didn't recognize the bloke down the hall, but from the reddish-brown hair and resemblance to the Weasleys he'd met so far, he guessed this was a relative.

“Go away, James, I'm busy,” Lily told him, then added in a low voice to Evander, “That's my oldest brother.”

“Didn't you only just have another date?” her brother demanded. He was scowling suspiciously at Evander. “Where's Hob? Where'd this one come from?”

“Scotland,” said Evander.

James Potter blinked at him. “Hang on, you're the Seeker on Molly's team. Evander Jinks.”

“Yeah, I am.”

James seemed genuinely confused now. “How...”

“Molly,” Lily said succinctly.

James still appeared confused, but a small dark-haired woman emerged from the ballroom then and took his hand.

“They're cutting the cake, darling,” she said. “Come along and leave Lily alone.”

“She's not alone, is she?” James said, but he allowed himself to be led away. “I ought to stuff him down the privy...”

The dark-haired woman wiggled her fingers in a tiny wave at Lily and Evander as she pulled James back into the ballroom.

“And that's Navya, his fiancée and overlord,” Lily remarked. “I like her.”

Evander decided he liked Navya too, for taking Lily's brother away and leaving them alone again. “Want to go walk along the canals?”

Lily took his hand firmly. “Yes. Let's find a bottle of wine and get friendly on a romantic bridge.”

They headed for the exit, and he remarked, “Maybe I can pick up a change of clothes somewhere, too. For tomorrow.”

“Oh, you won't need that,” she said confidently.

Evander smiled at her. “Walk of shame, is that what you're planning?”

“Are you going to be ashamed?”

“No. This is my best suit, aside from my birthday suit.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I'll be the judge of that, my lad.”


	13. Postscript: Portree vs. Wimbourne

_** three months post-wedding **_

Lily loved watching Quidditch. She had loved playing, too, when she was at school and was a Chaser for Gryffindor. Up until Dominique's wedding, she had usually attended the games somewhere in the stands, when she could get tickets, usually with Albus in tow.

Now she had a front-row seat in the coaches' box. It was much better than the stands. The seats were upholstered in velvet, purple since they were in Portree today, and there was a table set with water, tea, and finger foods, since the managers and coaches normally entertained the team owners in this box.

She felt absolutely spoiled and loved every second of it.

Fitz was officially sitting beside her, as he had at the previous three games she'd attended in the fancy box, but really he never actually sat down. He was pacing back and forth at the front of the box, shouting advice and swear words at the team, even though he knew none of them could hear him.

At the moment he was yelling at the referee. “Put your glasses on, you goddamn moron! That was cobbing! Do your effing job!”

No one else in the coaches' box was paying him any attention, not even the Wasps' coach, and Lily was mostly able to tune him out. She only wanted to watch Evander at the moment.

He was high up above the field, flying in a series of figure eights as he searched for the snitch. He looked very sexy in his team robes. But then, she pretty much found him sexy no matter what he was wearing. Even the Slytherin pajamas he'd had since Hogwarts didn't bother her. She had done a lengthening charm on the hem, though, so they actually fit him again now. He'd been wearing them this morning as they left his house for the pitch, because he believed they were good luck on game days.

She loved his little superstitions, which Molly said was ridiculous, but she didn't care. His quirks and oddities made him who he was, and she loved that, so who cared if he wanted to wear the pajamas he'd had since he was fifteen before every game? He'd developed a new superstition, which was that she had to kiss him exactly at the threshold of the pitch, at the team entrance, before a game, standing in the doorway as if there were mistletoe over their heads. Evander believed in luck, and Lily believed in it now too.

Look what luck had gotten her.

Well, really it was Molly's matchmaking, but Evander said it was luck that they fit so perfectly together, and having dated a lot of less-than-perfect blokes, she agreed.

She watched him flying, his curls ruffling in the breeze, and thought about how she'd once joked about taking out an ad for the perfect man. Not a caveman like her brothers, but tough enough to handle them. He had not been fazed at all by their threats at the beginning of his relationship with Lily, probably because he spent his professional life being targeted by the opposing team. He and Albus got along quite well now, and James had stopped threatening to stuff him down the privy and even invited him to one of their boys' nights with the cousins at the pub. Not intimidated by her father, who had seemed amused by how quickly Lily and Evander had fallen into a relationship. Her mother had met him before the wedding, while interviewing the Prides for her column, and quite liked him. She had agreed with Lily that Molly's matchmaking was unparalleled, though she said it would never have occurred to her to set him up with Lily. He was funny and fit, he thought she was beautiful, and he did the laundry because he knew she hated doing it. His quirks suited her just as hers suited him, and who could ask for more than that?

She wondered if she'd accidentally conjured him up when she'd been thinking about that advertisement. She hadn't known she was describing him perfectly when she came up with it.

The team manager came over to sit beside her, pulling her out of her reverie. Lily had only met Meghan McCormack twice before, but she was fairly certain the woman did like her. McCormack was a little gruff sometimes, so it was hard to say for sure.

“You know Jinks asked to have his contract modified again,” the manager said as she relaxed into the chair.

Lily smiled. Evander was always writing notes to McCormack about his contract. It was his hobby, to see what was the most ridiculous thing he could come up with that she would still agree to. Usually if Fitz was sent to deal with his request, it wasn't going to be added to the contract. Since McCormack was the one mentioning it, whatever Evander had asked for, he must be about to get.

“He wants it in his contract that you get to watch every game in the coaches' box,” McCormack told her.

Lily could feel a blush creeping up her face, and grinned widely at her. “He did?”

“I reckon having Harry Potter's daughter publicly a fan of our team will be good press,” the manager went on. “Even if really you're just a fan of our Seeker.”

Lily laughed at that. “I like the rest of the team, too! That's my cousin out there, you know.”

McCormack only smiled with a bit of smugness at the edges. “If you promise to pose for a press photo at every game you attend, you can tell Jinks he can have it in his contract.”

“Deal.” Lily held out a hand and McCormack shook it, then moved off back to her own seat beside the manager for Wimbourne and a few team owners.

Lily looked back at the game, still smiling. He had put a request in his contract just for her. She felt bubbly with glee. _Evander Jinks_ , she thought happily. _All mine_.

Half an hour into the second half of the game, he suddenly dove, holding tight to his broom, and she dashed from her seat to the front of the box beside Fitz for a better view.

“Go, go, go!” Fitz was yelling.

Evander grabbed the snitch seconds before crashing into the ground, pulling his broom in a perfect arc inches off the grass and then rolling sideways. He flew upward, holding the snitch aloft as the crowds in the stands cheered.

“Show-off,” Fitz chuckled, but he was still clapping for the capture of the snitch.

Lily's heartbeat slowed again, seeing he was safe. Of course he was, he flew brilliantly. He was flying toward the coaches' box now.

“Is he coming this way? What the effing hell does he think he's doing?” Fitz attempted to wave Evander away.

Evander landed neatly in the box beside Lily, dropped his broom and tossed the snitch at the coach. As Fitz caught it automatically, Evander scooped Lily up into his arms. She held on tightly to his shoulders to steady herself, eyes wide with surprise. She could hear the sound of cameras from the press box nearby, and knew there was about to be a photo of this scene in the _Daily Prophet_ and _Witch Weekly_. She hoped it was flattering, so she could frame it.

“You're not supposed to fly into the goddamn coaches' box, you idiot,” Fitz exclaimed as Evander kissed her.

*

Evander poured himself a glass of whiskey from Molly's bar table. The entire team was in her flat tonight, celebrating their victory over the Wasps. The new reserve players hired on for this season had all come along, so her flat felt packed with Quidditch players, but the main team was doing their usual: gambling in the living room, sprawled out on Molly's sofas.

Taking his whiskey, he returned to his spot on the armchair next to Chaser Zara Mackie's end of the sofa. Lily had been saving his seat, and they arranged themselves as per their usual: Lily on his lap, her legs draped over the arm of the chair and her hips tucked against his, just where he liked her to be. He offered her a sip of his whiskey once they'd settled into the chair, and she took a gulp before handing it back.

“Ooh, Speyside single malt,” she said approvingly. One of the many perfect things about Lily was that she shared his appreciation for fine whiskeys, even the Muggle ones.

He kissed her cheek and took a sip. He'd given Molly the bottle of Speyside as a Christmas gift, knowing she preferred vodka and he'd be the one drinking it at her next party. Lily had approved of this plan when he'd told her.

He and Lily agreed on most everything, he'd found. She fit with him perfectly, and he could not believe how lucky he was to have found her. She spent nearly all her time at his house in Skye, though they'd kept her flat in London for when they wanted to go to the city. Completely in sync since the first day they'd met, they hadn't even needed to discuss moving in. She'd simply announced she was going to move more of her clothes into his wardrobe, and he'd asked if she wanted help. He had likewise taken over a portion of her closet at her London flat. They'd taken to calling it _the flat_ and _the house_ , shared ownership implied and understood by both of them.

He assumed they would get married in much the same way, one day. Neither of them would actually propose, they would simply start planning the wedding.

Or maybe he would propose. He did like melodrama, the more public the better, and so did Lily. Maybe something really huge, possibly at the Quidditch World Cup when he played for Scotland next year. That would be fun.

“Nice shirt, Jinks,” Zara said then, distracting him, sliding him a look.

Evander glanced down at his chest. The blue heathered t-shirt was emblazoned with white letters in block print, spelling out _CO-ED NAKED QUODPOT_. “What? Lily bought me this while we were in New York. It's from the Peasegood Museum.”

“I can't believe you went to the Peasegood and you bought _that_ ,” said Fitz, who collected antique sport memorabilia and would probably love to go to the Museum of Magical Sports History. He was sitting on the sofa with Molly beside him, dealing cards to the team. Fitz always supervised the gambling, since Molly didn't like them betting too high at her flat. The team would bankrupt each other regularly without Molly's rules, especially Sid Whittlemore, the Chaser who was also a card sharp.

“Lily's a bad influence on you, Jinks,” Molly said with a grin at her cousin.

“What? It's funny,” Lily retorted.

Evander kissed her cheek again just for being the sort of person who bought him rude t-shirts, and she turned her head to kiss him back.

“Get a room,” said Zara beside them.

“We have a room,” Evander told her. “We have plenty of rooms. Haven't you seen the throw pillow Lily put in the guest room?”

“The one embroidered with ' _we did it in this room_ '? Yes, I have,” Zara said dryly.

Molly rolled her eyes at her cousin. “Honestly, Lily...”

Lily was laughing again, her eyes sparkling. “I thought it was funny!”

Among the many wonderful things about Lily was her dirty sense of humour. Evander particularly enjoyed her fondness for rude embroidery. She'd put one over his dresser that had beautiful flowers surrounding the word _twatwaffle_ in an elegant script. That one came a close second to the throw pillow for him for his new favorite decor.

“She's taken over his house,” rumbled Declan Preece, one of the team's Beaters. “Jinks's closet is so full of women's clothes, you'd think he'd decided to become a cross-dresser.”

“I'm building on a new closet addition for Lily's clothes,” Evander told him. “She needs a lot of space for her wardrobe, you know.”

“You crapped out on helping me build my koi pond, but you can build a wardrobe for Lily?” pointed out Beathan MacDougald, another Chaser.

“She bribed me with sex,” Evander said in his own defense. “I was helpless against her powers.”

Most of the team groaned at this, and the Beaters chucked a few coins and cards at him. Lily caught one of the coins and threw it back at Declan.

“They're just jealous,” Evander stage-whispered to her.

“No, we just think you're an idiot,” said their other Beater, Duff Gittins.

They went back to playing poker, and Evander settled in to watch with Lily still curled in his lap, sharing his whiskey. She had on a pale blue jumper cut deep enough at the neckline to give him a fine view of freckled cleavage, dark jeans, and purple boots that came up to her knees. She looked absolutely beautiful, as always. He brushed the coppery curls aside so he could kiss her neck, and she gave a little murmur of pleasure. _Lily Luna Potter_ , he thought. _All mine_.

He glanced over at Molly and found her watching him instead of the poker game. She looked a bit smug, because she loved to be right, and she often looked a bit smug when she saw him with Lily. They smiled at each other, and he assumed she knew he was grateful for that setup she'd given him. Molly was, after all, one of his best friends. She didn't need him to talk about his feelings. She just knew.


	14. Postscript: Weasley Family Dinner

_** six months post-wedding **_

Glenna perched on the countertop at the Weasleys' house, drinking a glass of wine and waiting for the lasagna to finish baking. She enjoyed cooking, and Hugo's mum always invited her to 'help' in the kitchen. She'd quickly discovered that Hermione Weasley was in fact a terrible cook, and Hugo had confided that normally his parents lived off of take-away, and his mum had only resumed her attempts at cooking to show off for Glenna. She thought this was hilarious, but she liked spending time with his mum, who was very intelligent and deeply interesting to talk to, so she did the cooking and they all pretended Hermione had been involved. Hermione liked to talk to Glenna about her work, and enjoyed long discussions on the history of spell language just as much as Glenna did, so mostly Hermione chatted and drank wine while Glenna did all the actual cooking.

Rose was leaning against the kitchen counter next to Glenna with a glass of wine of her own. She did not enjoy their magical linguistics chats, and couldn't cook any better than her mother, but she liked to hang out in the kitchen with them while Glenna made dinner.

“I went round your aunt Ginny's house yesterday,” Hermione was telling her daughter, “and she told me that Bill told her Dominique is pregnant.”

“We'll probably be getting announcements soon, then,” Rose remarked, then to Glenna she added, “When Thornton was born, she sent round Howlers in iambic pentameter.”

“They weren't Howlers, just singing letters,” said Hermione.

“They were loud, Mum.”

“Sounds par for the course for Dominique,” Glenna said with a chuckle. Hugo's least-favorite cousin loved that sort of thing. When his cousin Victoire had given birth shortly after her sister's wedding to a little girl they'd christened Fleur, she'd just had her husband Floo everyone to let them know. Glenna much preferred this more informal, and more typically Weasley, way of telling the family.

Ron Weasley poked his head in. He had Rose's young son Ramses in his arms. “Everything all right in here?”

“Five more minutes, Ron,” his wife told him, making shooing motions for him to go away.

“We're hungry, aren't we?” Ron directed this at Ramses, who cheerfully yelled, “Ya!”

Ramses was around a year and a half old, and could say about a dozen words. Glenna's favorite was when he addressed his uncle as 'you'. Hugo was a difficult name for a young lad, she thought with amusement. 'You' was a pretty good attempt. And Hugo was absolutely adorable with his little nephew, chasing the little boy around and making him shriek with laughter. He was extremely attractive when he was holding a child, too.

“Mama,” chirped Ramses, and Rose waved at her son. He blew a raspberry at her, which was his best attempt at blowing a kiss, and Ron returned to the living room with his grandson. Hugo and Scorpius were out there, watching Quidditch and yelling at the telly.

Glenna was a little torn between wanting to go back to Hugo and staying to chat in the kitchen. She did like being curled on the couch with Hugo to watch a game, but the Kestrels versus Catapults game had been going for eight hours already, and she'd had to abandon Hugo to 'help' his mother prepare dinner. Besides, there was only so long she could stand to watch Quidditch without getting bored. It was just that she liked being beside Hugo.

They hadn't spent more than two days apart since they'd met at the Portkeys six months ago. She'd got quite used to life with Hugo at her side. She felt a little itchy to get back to him, but she settled in to wait on the lasagna.

His mother was bound to burn it if left unsupervised.

Once the lasagna had been safely delivered to the table, Hermione made the men shut off the wireless and sent them to the dining room.

“There,” she said once everyone had taken their seats, smiling benevolently at them. “Isn't it nice to have the whole family together?”

Glenna smiled back, pleased to be included in the Weasley family, and felt Hugo's hand on her knee, giving her a little squeeze. She turned to wink at him, and he leaned over to kiss her cheek. She loved that he was unabashedly demonstrative in front of his family. He was very open with his feelings, which she appreciated deeply. It had only taken a month together before he'd said he loved her.

She knew he meant it. She'd felt loved even before he said the words. And she was sure she'd fallen in love with him every day since the wedding.

“This is wonderful,” Ron said around a mouthful of lasagna.

“Ronald, that's revolting.” His wife eyed him with her nose wrinkled in disgust.

He ignored her and shoveled in another forkful. “You should come round for dinner more often, Glenna.”

She smiled at Hugo's father. He was strongly motivated by food, a tip she'd received from Scorpius in the early days of her relationship with Hugo.

 _If you want to get on their dad's good side, you need to feed him_ , Scorpius had said. She had found this to be very good advice, though Ron had seemed to like her just fine without it.

“It really is delicious,” Rose agreed with her father. She also had a habit of talking with her mouth full, but made sure she never did it in front of her mother. When Rose and Scorpius came round Hugo's or Glenna's flat for dinner, Rose usually talked with her mouth full just as much as her father did.

Scorpius, who had better table manners than his girlfriend and never talked with his mouth full, was cutting the lasagna into bite-sized pieces for his son. Ramses already had red sauce smeared around his mouth and was eagerly trying to grab more.

“I helped,” Hermione said, and Glenna leaned around Hugo's back to pat her arm.

“She did help,” Glenna told the rest of them.

Ron grunted, and Hugo laughed. He was sure his mother's help had been limited to pouring the wine while Glenna did all the actual cooking. It was sweet of Glenna to stick up for his mother, though.

She and his mother had become fast friends, just as he'd expected. They had lunch together several days a week, deep in discussions about esoteric spell history and obscure charm language. They had created a spell together last month, and Glenna had written it up for _Transfiguration Today_ , crediting his mother as co-author.

Glenna was even willing to pretend she hadn't done all the cooking when they had dinner at his parents' house. He loved how well she blended into his family. She was learning to charm cheese from his grandmother, introduced Scorpius to a Muggle custom called karaoke, had tagged along with Hugo when it was his turn to pick Louis up from jail, and volunteered to babysit his nephew a few times, though she had yet to be brave enough to babsit his cousin Victoire's children. He could hardly blame her there; even Rose had to be blackmailed into babysitting her own godson.

Her family had accepted him just as readily as his family had accepted her. He spent hours with her father discussing the medicinal properties of certain plants in his greenhouse, and her mother had started sending him cuttings of her plants to start a greenhouse of his own. Most of her family was, as she'd said, not at all like her cousin Gwyneira, who still didn't like him. He liked her parents very much, and was devoutly relieved they liked him so well.

She had come into his life by chance, but now he couldn't imagine it without her. He remembered worrying to Molly that it was too easy. It still felt easy with Glenna, and he had stopped worrying about that.

She fit perfectly into his life, and he fit perfectly into hers. There didn't seem any point in worrying.

His father scarfed down the lasagna so he could return to the game. Hermione had given up on Ron's table manners long ago, but she made Hugo and Rose excuse themselves from the table properly, then carried Ramses off to entertain him in Rose's old bedroom, which had become a toy room for Ramses.

Hugo settled into the sofa with Glenna curled up under his arm. They had missed a handful of scores by the Kestrels in the time they'd been away for dinner, but it didn't appear the snitch was going to be caught any time soon.

“Catapults aren't looking good,” Ron commented as he made himself comfortable in his favorite armchair. “They got thrashed by Molly's team last weekend, too. They could do with the break next season, get in the extra training.”

“Next season?” Glenna echoed.

“Next year is the World Cup,” Hugo told her. “Most of the teams will go on hiatus as they lose players to the national teams. Jinks was asked to be Seeker for Scotland.”

“They should have picked Molly as Keeper,” Ron said doggedly. “Picking that idiot out of Montrose instead, honestly...”

“He had a better block rate than Molly this season,” said Hugo.

“Not by much.” His father hushed them then so he could settle in to watch the match.

Hugo kept part of his attention on the game, but mainly focused on Glenna, her warm body curled up against his, her head resting on his shoulder. He stroked one hand down her arm, feeling the soft skin and marveling over how beautiful she looked when she was pretending his mother had made the lasagna.

“I love you, you know,” he whispered to her, dropping a kiss on top of her head.

“I love you too,” she whispered back, giving that delightful little wiggle she did when she scooted closer to him.

“Want to come stay at my flat tonight?”

“I was just going to invite you to stay at mine,” she murmured.

“Maybe we should consider getting a flat together.” Hugo had been thinking about that for some time now. He very much liked the idea of sharing a flat with her.

She looked up at him through her lashes. “Sounds brilliant.”


End file.
